"News!--no," answered the cavaliere, contemptuously. "I dare say it is
some lie. You have, I am sorry to say, Baldassare, all the faults of a
person new to society; you believe every thing."

Baldassare eyed the cavaliere defiantly; but he pulled at his curled
mustache in silence.

The cavaliere stopped short, raised his head, and scanned him
attentively.

"Out with it, my boy, out with it, or it will choke you! I see you are
dying to tell me!"

"Not at all, cavaliere," replied Baldassare, with assumed
indifference; "only I must say that I believe you are the only person
in Lucca who has not heard it."

"Heard what?" demanded Trenta, angrily.

Baldassare knew the cavaliere's weak point; he delighted to tease him.
Trenta considered himself, and was generally considered by others, as
a universal news-monger; it was a habit that had remained to him
from his former life at court. From the time of Polonius downward a
court-chamberlain has always been a news-monger.

"Heard? Why, the news--the great news," Baldassare spoke in the
same jeering tone. He drew himself up, affecting to look over the
cavaliere's head as he bent on his stick before him.