had no need to think; Roccaleone should be well stocked with them. But
the finding of the men gave him some concern. He had decided to enrol a
score, which was surely the smallest number with which he could make a
fair show of being martially in earnest. But even though the number was
modest, where was he to find twenty fellows who reeked so little of their
lives as to embark upon such an enterprise--even if lured by generous
pay--and thereby incur the ducal displeasure of Guidobaido?

He dressed himself with sober rigour for once in his foppish life, and
descended, after night had fallen, to a tavern in a poor street behind
the Duomo, hoping that there, among the dregs of wine, he might find what
he required.

By great good fortune he chanced upon an old freebooting captain, who
once had been a meaner sort of condottiero, but who was sorely reduced by
bad fortune and bad wine.

The tavern was a dingy, cut-throat place, which the delicate Gonzaga had
not entered without a tremor, invoking the saints' protection, and
crossing himself ere he set foot across the threshold. Some pieces of
goat were being cooked on the embers, in a great fireplace at the end of
the room farthest from the door. Before this, Ser Luciano--the taverner
--squatted on his heels and fanned so diligently that a cloud of ashes
rose ceiling high and spread itself, together with the noisome smoke,
throughout the squalid chamber. A brass lamp swung from the ceiling, and
shone freely through that smoke, as shines the moon through an evening
mist. So foully stank the place that at first Gonzaga was moved to get
him thence. Only the reflection that nowhere in Urbino was he as likely
as here to find the thing he sought, impelled him to stifle his natural
squeamishness and remain. He slipped upon some grease, and barely saved