rogues that I have since discovered many of them to be, though at the time
all who wore the scapulary were holy men in my innocent eyes. They were
mostly, or so they pretended, bent upon pilgrimages to distant parts,
living upon such alms as they could gather on their way.

On the steps of the chapel Fra Gervasio would stand--gaunt and impassive--
with his posse of attendant grooms behind him. One of the latter, standing
nearest to our almoner, held a great sack of broken bread; another
presented a wooden, trough-like platter filled with slices of meat, and a
third dispensed out of horn cups a poor, thin, and rather sour, but very
wholesome wine, which he drew from the skins that were his charge.

From one to the other were the beggars passed on by Fra Gervasio, and
lastly came they back to him, to receive from his hands a piece of money--a
grosso, of which he held the bag himself.

On the day of which I write, as I stood there gazing down upon that mass of
misery, marvelling perhaps a little upon the inequality of fortune, and
wondering vaguely what God could be about to inflict so much suffering upon
certain of His creatures, to cause one to be born into purple and another
into rags, my eyes were drawn by the insistent stare of two monks who stood
at the back of the crowd with their shoulders to the wall.

They were both tall men, and they stood with their cowls over their
tonsures, in the conventual attitude, their hands tucked away into the
ample sleeves of their brown habits. One of this twain was broader than
his companion and very erect of carriage, such as was unusual in a monk.
His mouth and the half of his face were covered by a thick brown beard, and
athwart his countenance, from under the left eye across his nose and cheek,
ran a great livid scar to lose itself in the beard towards the right jaw.