“What the devil!” quoth he very testily. “I thought you were in the garden with Madonna Giuliana.”
“My Lord Gambara is there,” said I.
He crimsoned and banged the table with his bony hand. “Do I not know that?” he roared, though I could see no reason for all this heat. “And why are you not with them?”
You are not to suppose that I was still the meek, sheepish lad who had come to Piacenza three months ago. I had not been learning my world and discovering Man to no purpose all this while.
“It has yet to be explained to me,” said I, “under what obligation I am to be anywhere but where I please. That firstly. Secondly—but of infinitely lesser moment—Monna Giuliana has sent me for the manuscript of Messer Caro's Gigli d'Oro.”
I know not whether it was my cool, firm tones that quieted him. But quiet he became.
“I... I was vexed by your interruption,” he said lamely, to explain his late choler. “Here is the thing. I found it here when I came. Messer Caro might discover better employment for his leisure. But there, there”—he seemed in sudden haste again. “Take it to her in God's name. She will be impatient.” I thought he sneered. “O, she will praise your diligence,” he added, and this time I was sure that he sneered.
I took it, thanked him, and left the room intrigued. And when I rejoined them, and handed her the manuscript, the odd thing was that the subject of their discourse having meanwhile shifted, it no longer interested her, and she never once opened the pages she had been in such haste to have me procure.
This, too, was puzzling, even to one who was beginning to know his world
But I was not done with riddles. For presently out came Fifanti himself, looking, if possible, yellower and more sour and lean than usual. He was arrayed in his long, rusty gown, and there were the usual shabby slippers on his long, lean feet. He was ever a man of most indifferent personal habits.