finally jumped the men, so as to leave a copper or two on the board; and
bidding the old man good-night, continued a conversation with Rocjean,
commenced previous to his game of draughts.

Next approaches a hardware--merchant, for, in Imperial Rome, the peddler
of a colder clime is a merchant, the shoemaker an artist, the artist a
professor. The hardware-man looks as if he might be 'touter' to a
broken-down brigand. All the razors in his box couldn't keep the small
part of his face that is shaved from wearing a look as if it had been
blown up with gunpowder, while the grains had remained embedded there.
He tempts you with a wicked-looking knife, the pattern for which must
have come from the _litreus_ of Etruria, the land called the _mother of
superstitions_, and have been wielded for auguries amid the howls and
groans of lucomones and priests. He tells you it is a Campagna-knife,
and that you must have one if you go into that benighted region; he says
this with a mysterious shake of his head, as if he had known Fra Diavolo
in his childhood and Fra 'Tonelli in his riper years. The
crescent-shaped handle is of black bone; the pointed blade long and
tapering; the three notches in its back catch into the spring with a
noise like the alarum of a rattle-snake. You conclude to buy one--for a
curiosity. You ask why the blade at the point finishes off in a circle?
He tells you the government forbids the sale of sharp-pointed knives;
but, signore, if you wish to _use it_, break off the circle under your
heel, and you have a point sharp enough to make any man have an
_accidente di freddo_, (death from cold--steel.)

Victor Hugo might have taken his character of Quasimodo from the wild
figure who now enters the Greco, with a pair of horns for sale; each
horn is nearly a yard in length, black and white in color; they have
been polished by the hunchback until they shine like glass. Now he