Owing to another weakness in our hero which we shall confess as naturally as we have related his fear in the police office at the end of the bridge, there were tears in his eyes; he was profoundly moved by the perfect devotion which he found among these contadini; he thought also of this characteristic generosity of his aunt; he would have liked to be able to make these people’s fortune. Lodovico returned, carrying a packet.
“So that’s finished,” the husband said to him in a friendly tone.
“It’s not that,” replied Lodovico in evident alarm, “people are beginning to talk about you, they noticed that you hesitated before turning down our vicolo and leaving the big street, like a man who was trying to hide.”
“Go up quick to the bedroom,” said the husband.
This room, which was very large and fine, had grey cloth instead of glass in its two windows; it contained four beds, each six feet wide and five feet high.
“Be quick! Be quick!” said Lodovico, “there is a swaggering fool of a constable who has just been posted here and began trying to make love to the pretty lady downstairs; and I’ve told him that when he goes travelling about the country he may find himself stopping a bullet. If the dog hears any mention of Your Excellency, he’ll want to do us a bad turn, he will try to arrest you here, so as to get Teodolinda’s trattoria a bad name.
“What’s this?” Lodovico went on, seeing Fabrizio’s shirt all stained with blood and his wounds bandaged with handkerchiefs, “so the porco showed fight, did he? That’s a hundred times more than you need to get yourself arrested, and I haven’t bought you any shirt.” Without ceremony he opened the husband’s wardrobe and gave one of his shirts to Fabrizio, who was soon attired like a prosperous countryman. Lodovico took down a net that was hanging on the wall, placed Fabrizio’s clothes in the basket in which the fish are put, went downstairs at a run and hastened out of the house by a back door; Fabrizio followed him.
“Teodolinda,” he called out as he passed by the bar, “hide what I’ve left upstairs, we are going to wait among the willows, and you, Pietro-Antonio, send us a boat quickly, we’ll pay well for it.”
Lodovico led Fabrizio across more than a score of ditches. There were planks, very long and very elastic, which served as bridges across the wider of these ditches; Lodovico took up these planks after crossing by them. On coming to the last canal he took up the plank with haste. “Now we can stop and breathe,” he said; “that dog of a constable will have to go two leagues and more to reach Your Excellency. Why, you’re quite pale,” he said to Fabrizio; “I haven’t forgotten the little bottle of brandy.”
“It comes in most useful; the wound in my thigh is beginning to hurt me; and besides, I was in a fine fright in the police office by the bridge.”
“I can well believe it,” said Lodovico; “with a shirt covered in blood, as yours was, I can’t conceive how you ever even dared to set foot in such a place. As for your wounds, I know what to do; I am going to put you in a cool place where you can sleep for an hour; the boat will come for us there, if there is any way of getting a boat; if not, when you have rested a little, we shall go on two short leagues, and I shall take you to a mill where I shall take a boat myself. Your Excellency knows far more than I do: the Signora will be in despair when she hears of the accident; they will tell her that you are mortally wounded, perhaps even that you killed the other man by foul play. The Marchesa Raversi will not fail to circulate all the evil reports that can hurt the Signora. Your Excellency might write.”
“And how should I get the letter delivered?”
“The boys at the mill where we are going earn twelve soldi a day; in a day and a half they can be at Parma, say four francs for the journey, two francs for the wear and tear of their shoe-leather: if the errand was being done for a poor man like me, that would be six francs; as it is in the service of a Signore, I shall give them twelve.”
When they had reached the resting-place in a clump of alders and willows, very leafy and very cool, Lodovico went to a house more than an hour’s journey away in search of ink and paper. “Great heavens, how comfortable I am here,” cried Fabrizio. “Fortune, farewell! I shall never be an Archbishop!”
On his return, Lodovico found him fast asleep and did not like to arouse him. The boat did not arrive until the sun had almost set; as soon as Lodovico saw it appear in the distance he called Fabrizio, who wrote a couple of letters.
“Your Excellency knows far more than I do,” said Lodovico with a troubled air, “and I am very much afraid of displeasing him seriously, whatever he may say, if I add a certain remark.”
“I am not such a fool as you think me,” replied Fabrizio, “and, whatever you may say, you will always be in my eyes a faithful servant of my aunt, and a man who has done everything in the world to get me out of a very awkward scrape.”
Many more protestations still were required before Lodovico could be prevailed upon to speak, and when, at last he had made up his mind, he began with a preamble which lasted for quite five minutes. Fabrizio grew impatient, then said to himself: “After all, whose fault is it? It is due to our vanity, which this man has very well observed from his seat on the box.” Lodovico’s devotion at last impelled him to
