the sound of footsteps
behind him. He stopped, and saw a man in dusty and shabby black clothes,
whom he took for a sbirro.

'Good-morning, Master Alessandro,' said the man with some politeness.

'That is my master's name,' answered Cucurullo, 'not mine, and he is not
deformed. Therefore, if you are jesting with me, I beg you to pass on in
peace.'

'Your pardon, sir,' the man said, lifting his hat, 'have I not the
honour of addressing Signor Alessandro Guidi, the poet, for whom I have
a message from Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, whose servant I am?'

'No,' replied the other, pacified at being taken for the misshapen bard.
'I am only a servant like yourself, and my name is Cucurullo.'

The man seemed reassured and much amused, for he was a Piedmontese.

'Cuckoo-rulloo-cuckoo what?' he asked, laughing. 'I did not catch the
rest!'

Cucurullo fixed his unwinking blue eyes on the speaker's face with a
displeased expression, and after a moment the man turned pale and began
to tremble, for he saw that he had given grave offence, and to rouse the
anger of a hunchback, especially in the morning, might bring accident,
ruin, and perhaps sudden death before sunset. He shook all over, and the
blue eyes never winked, and seemed to grow more and more angry till they
positively blazed with wrath, and, at last, the fellow uttered a cry of
abject fright and turned and ran up the dirty street at the top of his
speed. But Cucurullo went quietly on his way, smiling with a little
satisfaction; for, after all, it was something to command kindness and
hospitality, or inspire mortal terror, by the deformity that afflicted
him. Possibly, too, in his humble heart he was pleased at having been
taken for such a social personage as a scholar and a man of letters;
for he had always been very careful to keep himself very clean and neat,
and if he had any vanity it was that no one could ever detect a spot on
his clothes. For instance, he always carried with him a little piece of
brown cotton, folded like a handkerchief, which he spread upon the
pavement in church before he knelt down, lest the knees of his breeches
should be soiled, and he treasured a pair of old goatskin gloves which
he had bought at a pawnshop in Venice, and which he put on when he
cleaned his master's boots or did any other dirty work.

After he had parted from Tommaso, the latter went about his business,
though not in breathless haste. His errand, as he had called it, to