Could it be that these robbers of whom he made a hedge for his protection were no better than himself, or was it that the man's terrific brutality was on such a scale that it filled them with an almost supernatural awe of him?
To men better versed than am I in the mysterious ways of human nature do I leave the answering of these questions.
The ogre turned his bloodshot eyes upon me, as with his hand he caressed his tawny beard.

He seemed to have cooled a little now, and to have regained some mastery of his drunken self.

Old Mariani tottered back to his buffet, and stood leaning against it, his eyes wandering, with the look of a man demented, to the fire that had devoured his child.

There, indeed, if he escaped the madness with which the poignancy of his grief was threatening him, was a tool that might turn its edge against this inhuman monster, this devil, this bloody carnifex of a Governor.
"Chance," said Ramiro, "has designed that you should see something of how we deal with clumsy knaves at Cesena, Boccadoro.

To disobedient ones I can assure you that we are not half so merciful.