He winked at the window which seemed to hold the fascination for the other, then nodded approval.
"Saw you ever a prettier piece of flesh and blood?"
"Yet she looks more like a waxen image than a woman of the stuff you mention, Sir Pilgrim," returned the nobleman in a barbarous jargon of tenth century Latin.
"She is poisoned by the stench amid which she lives, and it were charity to take her out of it," replied the pilgrim, with a swift glance at the cross-bow slung over the other's shoulders.
"Ay, by the mass! You speak truth!" affirmed Vitelozzo, while a fourth personage, whom he had not heretofore observed, had during their discourse emerged from the shadows and had silently joined the survey.
"Would the whole Ghetto were put to plunder!" sighed the baron, turning to the pilgrim, "but I am under severe penance now by order of the Vicar of the Church."
"You must indeed have wrought some special deed of grace, to need his intercession," the pilgrim sneered with disgusting familiarity.
Vitelozzo peered into the face of his interlocutor, doubtful whether to resent the pleasantry or to feel flattered. Then he shrugged his shoulders.
"'Twas but for relieving an old man of some few evil days of pains and aches," he then replied carelessly. "But since we are at questioning,—what merit is yours to travel so far with the cockle-shells? Surely 'twas not just to witness the crumbling of this planet into its primeval dust?"
"They say—I killed my brother," replied the disguised pilgrim coldly.