“True: but it may make the man who wears it feel himself all the safer if he should want to hurt somebody.
No, no; it’s not my own work; but it’s fine work of Maso of Brescia; I should be loth for it to cover the heart of a scoundrel. I must know who is to wear it.”
“Well, then, to be plain with you, Niccolò mio, I want it myself,” said Tito, knowing it was useless to try persuasion. “The fact is, I am likely to have a journey to take—and you know what journeying is in these times. You don’t suspect me of treason against the Republic?”
“No, I know no harm of you,” said Niccolò, in his blunt way again.
“But have you the money to pay for the coat? For you’ve passed my shop often enough to know my sign: you’ve seen the burning account-books. I trust nobody. The price is twenty florins, and that’s because it’s secondhand. You’re not likely to have so much money with you. Let it be till tomorrow.”
“I happen to have the money,” said Tito, who had been winning at play the day before, and had not emptied his purse. “I’ll carry the armour home with me.”
Niccolò reached down the finely-wrought coat, which fell together into little more than two handfuls.
“There, then,” he said, when the florins had been told down on his palm. “Take the coat. It’s made to cheat sword, or poniard, or arrow. But, for my part, I would never put such a thing on. It’s like carrying fear about with one.”
Niccolò’s words had an unpleasant intensity of meaning for Tito. But he smiled and said—