Stretched on the ground in his cloak, and leaning his head thoughtfully on his hand, was a man of tall stature, and middle age. He lifted himself on his arm with great alacrity as the Cavalier entered.
“Well, Brettone, I have counted the hours—what tidings?”
“Albornoz consents.”
“Glad news! Thou givest me new life. Pardieu, I shall breakfast all the better for this, my brother. Hast thou remembered that I am famishing?”
Brettone drew from beneath his cloak a sufficiently huge flask of wine, and a small panier, tolerably well filled; the inmate of the tower threw himself upon the provant with great devotion. And both the soldiers, for such they were, stretched at length on the ground, regaled themselves with considerable zest, talking hastily and familiarly between every mouthful.
“I say, Brettone, thou playest unfairly; thou hast already devoured more than half the pasty: push it hitherward. And so the Cardinal consents! What manner of man is he? Able as they say?”
“Quick, sharp, and earnest, with an eye of fire, few words, and comes to the point.”
“Unlike a priest then;—a good brigand spoilt. What hast thou heard of the force he heads? Ho, not so fast with the wine.”
“Scanty at present.—He relies on recruits throughout Italy.”
“What his designs for Rome? There, my brother, there tends my secret soul! As for these petty towns and petty tyrants, I care not how they fall, or by whom. But the Pope must not return to Rome. Rome must be mine. The city of a new empire, the conquest of a new Attila! There, every circumstance combines in my favour!—the absence of the Pope, the weakness of the middle class, the poverty of the populace, the imbecile though ferocious barbarism of the Barons, have long concurred to render Rome the most facile, while the most glorious conquest!”