I knew the Capuchin very well--if not by his white half-beard, then by
that jutting tusk of his--at once so loose and so menacing. It was that
very same who at the hospital of Rovigo had looked at me so hard, had
burnt my cheek with his hot breath and urged the value of his friendship
so clamantly against that of the Jew's; Fra Palamone, as I remembered
his name. Nor could I forget why I had decided against him, nor in what
terms. It had been because, when I had brought my handful of money
flooding out of my pocket, two ducats had been covered by this man's
foot and had been buried deep in his toes.

"Buon di," said he in cheerful Tuscan speech. "Are you come upon a like
errand of accommodation, by chance? You are welcome to a corner of my
dressing-room. We'll strike a bargain. If you dip my beard, I'll dip
yours."

I said that would be bad commerce on my part, since I had no beard.
"You, sir," I added, "have a remarkable one, which I confess I regret to
see coloured."

"A fig for your regrets, little man," said the other. "Politics is the
cry. If your passport described you as a middling-sized man with a black
beard and a running at the nose, you'd be doing as I am. But you'll
never have such a passport as that."

"My passport," I told him, "is destroyed. It described me as a young Jew
with an assured manner and a pendulous nose."

This caused the Capuchin to look upon his visitor. Whether he knew me or
not, then or before, he made no sign. "There's no flattery in that," he
said, "but you could have done it. A manner's a manner, and there's an