"Flogged, shaved, and marked with a hot iron, for that trifle!" said the crowd. "It is too severe!"
"Do you hear that, Migleo?" said a voice. "He values us at fifty pennies a piece--it's absurd!"
The herald again commanded silence.
"If any one wounds a soldier, he shall lose his hand; whoever kills one shall be decapitated!"
"I say, Migleo, what would you look like, with a shaved head?"
"Don't you think, Robbio, that in the course of a fortnight, the most of us will have neither heads nor hands? For my part, it is as impossible for me to keep my hands off a Pavian, as it is to meet a chicken without wringing its neck?"
"And I can't look at a Novara man, without wanting to spit in his face," said a Pavian, who stood by; and it was with difficulty the two were kept from fighting, even under the eyes of Hesso himself.
"Silence, fools!" said Robbio; "do you want to get into the executioner's clutches, already?"
"For the first theft, a varlet shall be flogged, shaved, and marked with the iron; for the second, he shall be hanged!" added the herald.
"There is one omission in the law about theft," said a voice. "It is forbidden to the varlets to rob, but there is nothing said about the masters. What would happen if the offender were a count, a duke, or a king?"