“Give me thy hand, Conrad;” he said, with the frank forgiveness which is apt to distinguish the reconciliation of men who pass their lives amid the violent, but sometimes ennobling, scenes of adventure and lawlessness.  “Thou hast thy humors and habits, and I have mine.  If thou findest this traffic in penances and prayers to thy fancy, follow the trade, of Heaven’s sake, and leave me and my dog to live by other means!”

“Thou ought’st to have bethought thee how much reason we pilgrims have to prize the mastiffs of the mountain,” answered Conrad, “and how likely it was to stir my blood to see another cur devouring that which was intended for old Uberto.  Thou hast never toiled up the sides of St. Bernard, friend Maso, loaded with the sins of a whole parish, to say nothing of thine own, and therefore canst not know the value of these brutes, who so often stand between us pilgrims and a grave of snow.”

Il Maledetto smiled grimly, and muttered a sentence between his teeth; for, in perfect consonance with the frank lawlessness of his own life, there was a reckless honesty in his nature, which caused him to despise hypocrisy as unworthy of the bold attributes of manhood.

“Have it as thou wilt, pious Conrad,” he said sneeringly, “so there be peace between us.  I am, as thou knowest, an Italian, and though we of the south seek revenge occasionally of those who wrong us, it is not often that we do violence after giving a willing palm—­I trust ye of Germany are no less honest?”

“May the Virgin be deaf to every ave I have sworn to repeat, and the good fathers of Loretto refuse absolution, if I think more of it!  ’Twas but the gripe of a throat, and I am not so tender in that part of the body as to fear it is to be the forerunner of a closer squeeze.  Didst ever hear of a churchman that suffered in this way?”

“Men often escape with less than their deserts;” Maso drily answered.  “Well, fortune, or the saints, or Calvin, or whatever power most suits your tastes, good friends, has at length put a roof over our heads,—­an honor that rarely arrives to most of us, if I may judge by appearances and some little knowledge of the different trades we follow.  Thou wilt have a fair occasion to suffer Policinello to rest from his uneasy antics, Pippo, while his master breathes the air through a window for the first time in many a day, as I will answer.”

The Neapolitan had no difficulty in laughing at this sally; for his was a nature that took all things pleasantly, though it took nothing under the corrective of principle or a respect for the rights of others.

“Were this Napoli, with her gentle sky and hot volcano,” he said, smiling at the allusion, “no one would have less relish for a roof than myself.”

“Thou wast born beneath the arch of some Duca’s gateway,” returned Maso, with a sort of reckless sarcasm, that as often cut his friends as his enemies; “thou wilt probably die in the hospital of the poor, and wilt surely be shot from the death-cart into one of the daily holes of thy Campo Santo, among a goodly company of Christians, in which legs and arms will be thrown at random like jack-straws, and in which the wisest among ye all will be puzzled to tell his own limbs from those of his neighbors, at the sound of the last trumpet.”