Rafael Sabatini

The Shame of Motley Rafael Sabatini

I had had some former acquaintance with this fellow, having first met him during the previous year, on the occasion of the Court of Pesaro's sojourn at Rome. His name was Ramiro del' Orca, and throughout the Papal army it stood synonymous for masterfulness and grim brutality. He was, as I have said, an enormous man, of prodigious bodily strength, heavy, yet of good proportions. Of his face one gathered the impression of a blazing furnace. His cheeks and nose were of a vivid red, and still more fiery was the hair, now hidden 'neath his morion, and the beard that tapered to a dagger's point. His very eyes kept tune with the red harmony of his ferocious countenance, for the whites were ever bloodshot as a drunkard's-which, with no want of truth, men said he was.