lance like a rod,
some seven or eight feet long, and armed at the end with a short iron
spike. This spike rested on the toe of his boot as he rode--an
attitude which, resembling that of a cavalier entering the tournament
lists, gave to the rod in question all the appearance of a knightly
lance. Yet there is in the recollection or the imagination of most
people another figure whom on the whole the rider in the Piazza della
Bocca della Verita would have been more likely to recall to their
minds--the mounted Arab of the desert. I hardly know why it should be
so. But there was a something about the general outline of the figure
draped in its cloak, and in the way in which the long slight lance was
held, that had an unmistakably Eastern look about it. There was a
certain air of dignity too about my friend which contributed to his
Arab-like appearance. Yet it was not exactly the dignity of the grave
and impassible Eastern man. It was a mixture of dignity and
jauntiness. There was a certain air of self-consciousness about the
man in the cloak and brigand's hat that told you clearly enough that
he knew he was riding remarkably well, and expected you to mark it
too. He would have been exceedingly unwilling that the glories of the
scarlet waistcoat with its silver buttons should have been eclipsed,
and he would have unmistakably fallen in his own esteem had the broad
scarlet ribbon been taken from his hat. The _pose_ and turn of his
well-shaped head on his shoulders provocatively challenged admiration,
and would have had a dash of insolence in them if the expression had
not been corrected by a pleasant smile, which showed a range of bright
white teeth beneath a jet-black moustache, and the good-humor of the
glance that tempered the frank roving boldness of the well-opened eye.
When it has been added that he was in the very prime of manhood, a
man of some thirty-five or thereabouts, I think that the reader will
be able to form a tolerably correct picture to himself of my
acquaintance, Nanni Silvani.

"And who and what is Nanni Silvani?" asked my companion when I had
categorically answered his question by stating the name of the rider
whose salutation I had returned.

"Nanni--or, more correctly, Signor Giovanni--Silvani is a _buttero_ of
the Roman Campagna," said I.

"And, pray, what may a 'buttero' be?" rejoined my Johnny Newcome,
looking back after the receding figure of the horseman with no little
curiosity.

"A buttero,"