“A noble sight!” said the captive Cavalier, with enthusiasm, as he reined in his steed, and gazed upon the wild and warlike streets of canvass, traversing each other in vistas broad and regular.

One of the captains of the Great Company who rode beside him, smiled complacently.

“There are few masters of the martial art who equal Fra Moreale,” said he; “and savage, reckless, and gathered from all parts and all countries—­from cavern and from marketplace, from prison and from palace, as are his troops, he has reduced them already into a discipline which might shame even the soldiery of the Empire.”

The Knight made no reply; but, spurring his horse over one of the rugged bridges, soon found himself amidst the encampment.  But that part at which he entered little merited the praises bestowed upon the discipline of the army.  A more unruly and disorderly array, the Cavalier, accustomed to the stern regularity of English, French, and German discipline, thought he had never beheld:  here and there, fierce, unshaven, half-naked brigands might be seen, driving before them the cattle which they had just collected by predatory excursions.  Sometimes a knot of dissolute women stood—­chattering, scolding, gesticulating—­collected round groups of wild shagged Northmen, who, despite the bright purity of the summer-noon, were already engaged in deep potations.  Oaths, and laughter, and drunken merriment, and fierce brawl, rang from side to side; and ever and anon some hasty conflict with drawn knives was begun and finished by the fiery and savage bravoes of Calabria or the Apennines, before the very eyes and almost in the very path of the troop.  Tumblers, and mountebanks, and jugglers, and Jew pedlers, were exhibiting their tricks or their wares at every interval, apparently well inured to the lawless and turbulent market in which they exercised their several callings.  Despite the protection of the horsemen who accompanied them, the prisoners were not allowed to pass without molestation.  Groups of urchins, squalid, fierce, and ragged, seemed to start from the ground, and surrounded their horses like swarms of bees, uttering the most discordant cries; and, with the gestures of savages, rather demanding than beseeching money, which, when granted, seemed only to render them more insatiable.  While, sometimes mingled with the rest, were seen the bright eyes and olive cheek, and half-pleading, half-laughing smile of girls, whose extreme youth, scarce emerged from childhood, rendered doubly striking their utter and unredeemed abandonment.

“You did not exaggerate the decorum of the Grand Company!” cried the Knight, gravely, to his new acquaintance.

“Signor,” replied the other, “you must not judge of the kernel by the shell.  We are scarcely yet arrived at the camp.  These are the outskirts, occupied rather by the rabble than the soldiers.  Twenty thousand men from the sink, it must be owned, of every town in Italy, follow the camp, to fight if necessary, but rather for plunder, and for forage:—­such you now behold.  Presently you will see those of another stamp.”