Something like a painful thrill appeared to dart through the frame of the listener, and arrest the careless stretching of his arms.  But he immediately recovered an air of indifference, took off the red Levantine cap which hung like a great purse over his left ear, and pushing back his long, dark brown curls, said smiling, “The fact is, I’m a stranger in Florence, and when I came in footsore last night, I preferred flinging myself in the corner of this hospitable porch to hunting for a chance hostelry, which might turn out to be a nest of bloodsuckers.  Can you show me the way to a more lively quarter, where I can get a meal and a lodging?”

“That I can,” said Bratti.

And, talking volubly as they went, Bratti led the way to the Mercato Vecchio, or the Old Market, promising to conduct him to the prettiest damsel in the Mercato for a cup of milk.

But as soon as they emerged from the narrow streets into the Old Market, they found the place packed with excited groups of men and women humming with gossip.

“Diavolo!” said Bratti.  “The Mercato has gone as mad as if the Holy Father had excommunicated us again!  I must know what this is.”

He pushed about among the crowd, inquiring and disputing, and was presently absorbed in discussing the newest development of Florentine politics, the death of Lorenzo de Medici, and whether or not this death was the beginning of the time of tribulation that Savonarola had been seeing in visions and foretelling in sermons.

Indifferent to this general agitation, the young stranger became tired of waiting for Bratti’s escort, and strolling on round the piazza, felt, on a sudden thought, in the wallet that hung at his waist.

“Not an obolus, by Jupiter!” he murmured, in a language that was not Tuscan or even Italian.  “I must get my breakfast for love, then!”

In a corner, away from any group of talkers, two mules were standing.  One carried wooden milk vessels, the other a pair of panniers filled with herbs and salads.  Resting her elbow on the mule that carried the milk, there leaned a young girl, apparently not more than sixteen, with a red hood surrounding her face, which was all the more baby-like in its prettiness from the entire concealment of her hair.  The poor child was weary, and it seemed to have gone to sleep in that half-standing, half-leaning posture.  Nevertheless, our stranger had no compunction in awaking her.  She opened her baby-blue eyes, and stared up with astonishment and confusion.

“Forgive me, pretty one, for awaking you,” he said.  “I’m dying with hunger, and the scent of milk makes breakfast seem more desirable than ever.”

She bestirred herself, and in a few moments a large cup of fragrant milk was held out to him; and by the time he set the cup down she had brought bread from a bag which hung by the side of the mule, and shyly and mutely insisted on his taking it, even though he told her he had nothing to pay her with; and just as he was leaning down to kiss her he was harshly interrupted by Monna Ghita, Tessa’s mother, who had come upon them unobserved.