rose the head of a man wearing a white
mitre with yellow cabalistic figures upon it.

"Behold, my children!" Tito heard him saying, "behold your opportunity!
neglect not the holy sacrament of matrimony when it can be had for the
small sum of a white quattrino--the cheapest matrimony ever offered, and
dissolved by special bull beforehand at every man's own will and
pleasure. Behold the bull!" Here the speaker held up a piece of
parchment with huge seals attached to it. "Behold the indulgence
granted by his Holiness Alexander the Sixth, who, being newly elected
Pope for his peculiar piety, intends to reform and purify the Church,
and wisely begins by abolishing that priestly abuse which keeps too
large a share of this privileged matrimony to the clergy and stints the
laity. Spit once, my sons, and pay a white quattrino! This is the
whole and sole price of the indulgence. The quattrino is the only
difference the Holy Father allows to be put any longer between us and
the clergy--who spit and pay nothing."

Tito thought he knew the voice, which had a peculiarly sharp ring, but
the face was too much in shadow from the lights behind for him to be
sure of the features. Stepping as near as he could, he saw within the
circle behind the speaker an altar-like table raised on a small
platform, and covered with a red drapery stitched all over with yellow
cabalistical figures. Half-a-dozen thin tapers burned at the back of
this table, which had a conjuring apparatus scattered over it, a large
open book in the centre, and at one of the front angles a monkey
fastened by a cord to a small ring and holding a small taper, which in
his incessant fidgety movements fell more or less aslant, whilst an
impish boy in a white surplice occupied himself chiefly in cuffing the
monkey, and adjusting the taper. The man in the mitre also wore a
surplice, and over it a chasuble on which the signs of the zodiac were
rudely marked in black upon a yellow ground. Tito was sure now that he
recognised the sharp upward-tending angles of the face under the mitre:
it was that of Maestro Vaiano, the mountebank, from whom he had rescued
Tessa. Pretty little Tessa! Perhaps she too had come in among the
troops of contadine.

"Come, my maidens! This is the time for the pretty who can have many
chances, and for the ill-favoured who have few. Matrimony to be had--
hot, eaten, and done with as easily as _berlingozzi_! And see!" here
the conjuror held