noon
And yet when I remember how your gentlemen wounded him and then drove the watch before them like sheep , and yet never so much as showed their faces , I can not help hoping that they will do something for us . ' ` Hope by all means , my dear friend , for , as you say very well , my masters are no ordinary fine gentlemen , made up of curls and lace collars , and paste buckles and satin , and drawing-room small-swords of about the size and temper of a silver hairpin ! Why , most of these young dandies are no better than girls , and are not half such men as some priests I have known ! Either of my masters could skewer a round dozen of them while the bells are ringing for noon , and sit down to dinner at the last stroke as cool as if I had just shaved them and smoothed their clean collars over their coats ! But after all , dearest Cucurullo , they are only two , and I might bear them a hand with my cudgel , and we should be three -- only three men against the whole army of the Pope , horse , foot , and artillery , besides the Swiss Guard and the five or six hundred sbirri in plain clothes whom the Cardinal maintains in the holy city ! It would not be a fair fight , my friend ! ' Cucurullo smiled at Tommaso 's voluble statement of the odds , for the hunchback was not without a certain sense of humour .