The _pose_ and turn of his
well-shaped head on his shoulders provocatively challenged admiration,
and would have had a dash of insolence in them if the expression had
not been corrected by a pleasant smile, which showed a range of bright
white teeth beneath a jet-black moustache, and the good-humor of the
glance that tempered the frank roving boldness of the well-opened eye.
When it has been added that he was in the very prime of manhood, a
man of some thirty-five or thereabouts, I think that the reader will
be able to form a tolerably correct picture to himself of my
acquaintance, Nanni Silvani.
"And who and what is Nanni Silvani?" asked my companion when I had
categorically answered his question by stating the name of the rider
whose salutation I had returned.
"Nanni--or, more correctly, Signor Giovanni--Silvani is a _buttero_ of
the Roman Campagna," said I.
"And, pray, what may a 'buttero' be?" rejoined my Johnny Newcome,
looking back after the receding figure of the horseman with no little
curiosity.
"A buttero," I answered, "is one of the most peculiar and
characteristic products of that very peculiar region, the _Agro
Romano_.
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