On the contrary, he was able to play the innocent and to adopt an amiable role.

After his usual fashion, he entertained the company by recounting all sorts of lively adventures, describing them as experiences he had had during his last journey from Rome to Venice.

In substance these incidents were true enough, but they all dated from fifteen or twenty years earlier.

He secured an eager and interested audience.
Another member of the company announced as a noteworthy item of news that an officer of Mantua on a visit to a friend, a neighboring landowner, had been murdered, and that the robbers had stripped him to the skin.

The story attracted no particular attention, for in those days such occurrences were far from rare.