“Do not these youths remind you of exquisite music? I fear to see their faces. I do not want to be disappointed…”

Three men, slightly unsteady on their feet, turned the corner, and approached the youths. The latter tried to avoid the encounter, but the men stopped them.

“You shan’t go any farther, my little chicks,” one of them shouted. The others laughed.

“You will come along with us.”

“Stand aside!” one of the youths commanded. “Let us pass.”

The men looked at him from head to foot, and laughed.

“Just look at him! Why, my little midget, I can swallow you at a gulp,” one man, tall, muscular, and heavy-bearded, shouted gaily.

“It’s a girl,” another said.

“They are both girls…can’t you see?” the third one added, scrutinizing their faces.

“It is fortunate for you that we have left our swords at home…or we should give you proof of our manhood!”

“There are other ways of determining that problem,” one of the three remarked with an obscene leer.

“They are boys!” the first of three exclaimed.

“It does not matter what you are, my little ones. Come with us… !”

“Take your foul hands away! Stand aside, let us pass or tomorrow your bodies shall swing from the gibbet,” exclaimed one of the two, his voice raised in a boyish treble.

“Ha, ha! Ha, ha! The fellow has courage,” cried the bearded roysterer, clumsily embracing the child.

“Tomorrow takes care of itself. When we come across delicious fruit, we pluck it,” shouted the second, a red-faced youth with Spanish mustachios.

“And we pluck it tonight,” added the tallest of the three, a dark, dean-shaven villain.

A little hand descended upon his cheek with enough force to make him hear the angels sing. Fury and desire outstripped his pain. He seized the combative little figure and pressed the humid ardor of drunken kisses upon the child’s mouth.

The other two men grasped the second youth by the arms and pulled him into the thicket.

I approached. “Why do you molest these young people?”

“Mind your own business!”

The youths looked at me. Their faces were almost exactly alike and of singular beauty.

“I shall not interfere with you, if you will not interfere with them.”

“Stand off or– —”

One of them placed his hand upon the hilt of his knife. Kotikokura, who was standing in back of me, jumped at his throat.

The others drew their swords. Kotikokura loosened his grip on the first one who coughed violently, then struck the second roysterer a blow over the face which upset him. I gripped the third, and with one delicate twist which I had learned in the East, dislocated his arm. His sword dropped and he bent in two, howling with pain.

“These drunken ruffians will no longer annoy you,” I said to the youths who were holding each other’s arms, trembling.

“We are grateful to you, signor,” one of them answered manfully.

“May we accompany you to where you desire to go, seeing that it is not safe for two young people like you to be out on such a night unaccompanied and unarmed?”

“We are going home, and if you will be good enough to accompany us, we shall be beholden to you.”

We stopped at the gate of a palace, situated near the Duomo.

“It is here that we live, signore,” one of the youths informed me. “Should you care to come in, our uncle will be delighted to make your acquaintance and thank you for your chivalrous aid.”

I made a few evasive excuses.

“Do come!” he insisted.

“Are you certain that you are not inviting—the Devil and his—valet?”

They laughed.

We accepted.

BARON DI MARTINI, a distant relative of the Prince—or if the rumor was true, a half-brother—greeted us cordially.

“Can you imagine, signore, two young scatterbrains going about the city unattended? I did not know about it until half an hour ago, and I have just sent some servants in search of them. I am really grateful to you, signore, for having saved them from much unpleasantness.”

A lackey removed the cloaks of the youths. One of them embraced the Baron. “What!” he exclaimed, “dressed as a boy, Antonia? What does this mean?”

“It is la Festa del Grillo, uncle! Summer! On such a day surely I may have a fling at life…”

The Baron laughed.

How had I been so unobservant? The handsome youth was a girl! The scoundrels that accosted them suspected aright. Nevertheless, there was in the slim, graceful figure, a touch of something that justified the boyish mummery.

“Uncle,” said the other, “we have invited these gentlemen to be our guests.”

“Splendid, Antonio,” the uncle remarked.

Antonio, slim and impetuous, was evidently a boy. However it imposed no strain upon the imagination to regard him as a girl in disguise. Without being effeminate he still had that first bloom of childhood, which is either sexless or epicene.

“Is it proper really,” I asked, “to intrude upon you in this fashion?”

“I insist, signor, you must be my guests,” the Baron replied.

“I asked the young gentlemen—or as I notice now—the signor and the signorina, whether they were quite certain they were not inviting…most sinister characters.”

“Sinister characters!” the uncle laughed. “I do not think a gentleman can ever disguise himself.”

“It was easy for the signorina to masquerade as a lad.”

Antonia clapped her hands. “I am so glad I deceived you.”

“You ought to see me dressed as a woman,” Antonio interjected.

“Oh yes, he is wonderful!” exclaimed Antonia. “He should have been a woman…and I a man, really.”

“Silence, woman,” the boy commanded gravely, “or I shall presently chastise you.”

Antonia laughed. “You should have heard him threaten the three scoundrels that were annoying us, Uncle. ‘It is fortunate for you that we left our swords at home. Stand aside, let us pass, or tomorrow you shall swing from the gibbet.’ ”

Everybody laughed.

“Really, signor, these young scatterbrains are keen at reading faces. They take after their mother, my sister, a remarkable woman. May her soul rest in peace!”

“We hesitated to accept your invitation because we are strangers in Florence and have no wish to transgress upon your kindness. I am Count de Cartaphile of Provence.”

“Count de Cartaphile!” the Baron exclaimed. “A descendant of Count de Cartaphile who single-handed slew a regiment of infidels and captured the Holy Sepulchre almost alone?”

I nodded.

“What a fortunate coincidence, children!”

Antonio and Antonia looked at me with new interest.

“What an honor, Count…and what a delightful surprise! I am writing the history of the Crusades. How often I have spoken to my nephew and to my niece about the exploits of your ancestor, and his companion, the Red Knight! I once wrote to you to Provence but evidently my message, entrusted to a wandering scholar, failed to reach its destination. You must be our guest, Count—as long as you remain in Florence.”

“Yes, yes,” the children insisted.

I promised to stay overnight.

Baron di Martini showed me the garden and orchard which surrounded the castle. Kotikokura walked behind us between two large dogs, black as charcoal.

“The more I read about the chivalrous deeds of Count de Cartaphile and the Red Knight, the more fascinating those two characters become.”

We walked in silence for a while in a deluge of flowers.

“Do you think it really possible, Baron, for two knights such as the Count de Cartaphile and the Red Knight—single-handed—to capture the Holy Sepulchre from a thousand defenders?”

I looked at him quizzically.

He nodded. “Sheer physical strength is not enough. Your ancestor may have known the secret word that enlists invisible powers. Both he and the Red Knight, too, undoubtedly called angels in armor to help. The hosts of Heaven were their retinue.”