The Duke of Spoleto smote his thighs and laughed like a woodpecker.
They passed two howl-women, making for a near-by castle and practising their doleful chants.
The duke greeted them with a grotesque bow.
"Why so joyful, fascinating graces?" he bellowed through his auburn bristles. "Is the fiend assembling a chorus in these regions, to lead it in procession to hell? I commend his taste!"
The howl-women gibbered some inarticulate response and blew down the road, to the great delight of the duke.
A fat reeve with heavy saddle-bags and a fiery face whipped a mouse-colored nag right about and departed the way he came, as soon as he spied the duke in the distance.
The duke's mirth increased as the mud-sticker, as he called him, took to flight. He seemed vastly pleased with the respect he inspired.
At last, at a cross-road, they came upon two women in red cloaks and gaudy tunics, seated on the greensward, with a certain dubious alertness about the eyes, that glimmered between hunger and discontent. By their side in the grass lay a viol; they seemed to have chosen the spot to rest.
As the duke and his companion approached, the twain watched them with a peculiar, hard-eyed intentness, glanced at each other, and smiled.