"Stratico admires Fortuna," said the marchioness, "and I confess that her
writings have great merit, but it's a pity one cannot go to the house,
except under an incognito."

"Why not?" I asked, in some astonishment.

"What!" said she to the abbe, "you did not tell him whose house it is?"

"I did not think it necessary, her father and mother rarely shew
themselves."

"Well, it's of no consequence."

"But what is her father?" I asked, "the hangman, perhaps?"

"Worse, he's the 'bargello', and you must see that a stranger cannot be
received into good society here if he goes to such places as that."

Chiaccheri looked rather hurt, and I thought it my duty to say that I
would not go there again till the eve of my departure.

"I saw her sister once," said the marchioness; "she is really charmingly
pretty, and it's a great pity that with her beauty and irreproachable
morality she should be condemned to marry a man of her father's class."

"I once knew a man named Coltellini," I replied; "he is the son of the
bargello of Florence, and is poet-in-ordinary to the Empress of Russia. I
shall try to make a match between him and Fortuna's sister; he is a young
man of the greatest talents."