Let me add that he was secretary to the Duke Pier Luigi Farnese, and that he was here in Piacenza on a mission to the Governor in which his master's interests were concerned.
The other two who completed that company are of no account, and indeed their names escape me, though I seem to remember that one was named Pacini and that he was said to be a philosopher of considerable parts.
Bidden to table by Messer Fifanti, I took the chair he offered me beside his lady, and presently came the old servant whom already I had seen, bearing meat for me.

I was hungry, and I fell to with zest, what time a pleasant ripple of talk ran round the board.

Facing me sat my cousin, and I never observed until my hunger was become less clamorous with what an insistence he regarded me.

At last, however, our eyes met across the board.

He smiled that crooked, somewhat unpleasant smile of his.
"And so, Ser Agostino, they are to make a priest of you ?" said he.
"God pleasing," I answered soberly, and perhaps shortly.
"And if his brains at all resemble his body," lisped the Cardinal-legate, "you may live to see an Anguissola Pope, my Cosimo." My stare must have betrayed my amazement at such words.