'Look here,' said Orsino. 'I shall feel anxious about you after this affair. Unless you will carry some weapon, I shall have you escorted to Santa Vittoria and back by a carabineer.'
'How absurd!'
'I will, I assure you. If you were like that miserable Francesco Pagliuca, I should send four men with you. But I know that you could make a pretty good defence alone, if you had anything to fight with.'
'Of course if you insist in that way, I must. I utterly refuse to be followed about by soldiers. It is too ridiculous. Have you got a knife? Something that is easy to carry—'
'Two or three,' answered Orsino. 'There is a very nice bowie knife—one of those American things made in England. It is convenient, for it has a cross-hilt and a leathern sheath.'
He rose from the table and opened a drawer in an old-fashioned press, from which he produced the weapon in question.
'There is a saddler in Rome who gets these things,' he observed, showing it to his brother. 'You see it is really a dagger, for there is no spring. It is made solid and straight and would go through anything, I should think. Look at the thickness of the back of the blade, will you? And the point is extremely fine. You could engrave with it, and yet it is as strong as the rest.'
Ippolito turned the knife over and over.
'At all events it will be useful in cutting up the bits of leather I use for mending the old organ,' he observed. 'My pocket knife is of hardly any use.'
He sheathed the knife-blade and dropped it into the deep side pocket of his cassock.