Even in his travelling-dress Odo was not a figure to pass
unnoticed, and he was soon assailed by laughing compliments on his looks
and invitations to visit the various shows concealed behind the flapping
curtains of the tents. There were enough pretty faces in the crowd to
justify such familiarities, and even so modest a success was not without
solace to his vanity. He lingered for some time in the square, answering
the banter of the blooming market-women, inspecting the
filigree-ornaments from Genoa, and watching a little yellow bitch in a
hooped petticoat and lappets dance the furlana to the music of an
armless fiddler who held the bow in his teeth. As he turned from this
show Odo's eye was caught by a handsome girl who, on the arm of a
dashing cavalier in somewhat shabby velvet, was cheapening a pair of
gloves at a neighbouring stall. The girl, who was masked, shot a dark
glance at Odo from under her three-cornered Venetian hat; then, tossing
down a coin, she gathered up the gloves and drew her companion away. The
manoeuvre was almost a challenge, and Odo was about to take it up when a
pretty boy in a Scaramouch habit, waylaying him with various graceful
antics, thrust a play-bill in his hand; and on looking round he found
the girl and her gallant had disappeared. The play-bill, with a wealth
of theatrical rhetoric, invited Odo to attend the Performance to be
given that evening at the Philodramatic Academy by the celebrated Capo
Comico Tartaglia of Rimini and his world-renowned company of Comedians,
who, in the presence of the aristocracy of Vercelli, were to present a
new comedy entitled "Le Gelosie di Milord Zambo," with an Intermezzo of
singing and dancing by the best Performers of their kind.
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