His first name was Girolamo, but everyone called him Guido.
Like Beppo, Guido took his surname from his job, though he didn't have a proper job at all.
One of his many unofficial activities was showing tourists around the city, so he was universally known as Guido Guide.
His sole qualification for the job was a peaked cap, which he promptly clapped on his head whenever any tourists strayed into the neighbourhood.
Then, wearing his most earnest expression, he would march up and offer to show them the sights.
If they were rash enough to accept, Guido let fly.
He bombarded his unfortunate listeners with such a multitude of made-up names, dates and historical events that their heads started spinning.
Some of them saw through him and walked off in a huff, but the majority took his tales at face value
and dropped a few coins into his cap when he handed it around at the end of a sightseeing tour.
Although Guide's neighbours used to chuckle at his flights of fancy, they sometimes looked stern
and remarked that it wasn't really right to take good money for dreaming up a pack of lies.
“I'm only doing what poets do,” Guido would argue. “Anyway, my customers get their money's worth, don't they?”
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