“Billy Priske,” said I, “has given me some account of them up to your parting from my father—­at Calenzana, was it not?”

“At Calenzana.”  Mr. Fett sighed assent.  “Ah!  Cavalier, it has been a stony road we have travelled from Calenzana. Infandum jubes renovare dolorem . . . but Badcock must bear the blame.”

     Badcock with his flute made trees—­

Has it ever struck you sir, that Orpheus possibly found the gift of Apollo a confounded nuisance; that he must have longed at times to get rid of his attendant beasts and compose in private?  Even so it was with Badcock.

“That infernal mufro chivvied us up the road to Calvi and into the very arms of a Genoese picket.  The soldiers arrested us—­there was no need to arrest the mufro, for he trotted at our heels—­and marched us to the citadel, into the presence of the commandant.  To the commandant (acting, as I thought, upon a happy inspiration) I at once offered the beast in exchange for our liberty.  I was met with the reply that, as between rarities, he would make no invidious distinctions, but preferred to keep the three of us; and moreover that the mufro (which had already put a sergeant and two private soldiers out of action) appeared amenable only to the strains of Mr. Badcock’s flute. . . .  And this was a fact, Cavalier.  At first, and excusably, I had supposed the brute’s behaviour to express aversion; until, observing that he waited for the conclusion of a piece before butting at Mr. Badcock’s stomach, I discovered this to be his rough-and-ready method of demanding an encore.

“The commandant proved to be a virtuoso.  Persons of that temperament (as you may have remarked) are often unequal to the life of the camp with its deadening routine, its incessant demand for vigilance in details; and, as a matter of fact, he was on the point of being superseded for incompetence.  His recall arrived, and for a short while he was minded to make a parting gift of us to his late comrades-in-arms, sharing us up among the three regiments that composed the garrison and endowing them with a mascot apiece; but after a sharp struggle selfishness prevailed and he carried us with him to the mainland.  There for a week or two, in an elegant palace behind the Darsena, we solaced his retirement and amused a select circle of his friends, till (wearying perchance of Badcock’s minstrelsy) he dismissed us with a purse of sequins and bade us go to the devil, at the same time explaining that only the ingratitude he had experienced at the hands of his countrymen prevented his offering us as a gift to the Republic.

“We left the city that afternoon and climbed the gorges towards Novi, intending our steps upon Turin.  The mufro trotted behind us, and mile after mile at the brute’s behest—­its stern behest, Cavalier—­ Mr. Badcock fluted its favourite air, I attempt from love’s sickness to fly.  But at the last shop before passing the gate I had provided myself with a gun; and at nightfall, on a ledge above the torrent roaring at our feet, I did the deed. . . .  Yes, Cavalier, you behold a sportsman who has slain a wild sheep of Corsica.  Such men are rare.