A third man, with a round hat on one side of his head, and who wore a very light-coloured overcoat, displaying a purple scarf with a showy pin at the neck, held a newspaper in one hand and a fork in the other, with which he slowly ate mouthfuls of a ragout of wild boar.

He was a journalist on the staff of an advanced radical paper.
"Halloa, Sor Marzio!" cried this last guest, suddenly looking up from the sheet he was reading, "here is news of your brother." "What ?" asked Marzio briefly, but as though the matter were utterly indifferent to him.

"Has he killed anybody, the assassin ?" The journalist laughed hoarsely at the jest.
"Not so bad as that," he answered.

"He is getting advancement.

They are going to make him a canon of Santa Maria Maggiore.