Angelo smiled at the visible effect of the liquor.

‘Barto Rizzo would be the man to take you in hand,’ he remarked.

The innkeeper flung his head back to ejaculate, and murmured, ’Barto Rizzo! defend me from him!  Why, he levies contribution upon us in the Valtellina for the good of Milan; and if we don’t pay, we’re all of us down in a black book.  Disobey, and it’s worse than swearing you won’t pay taxes to the legitimate—­perdition to it!—­Government.  Do you know Barto Rizzo, padrone?  You don’t know him, I hope?  I’m sure you wouldn’t know such a fellow.’

‘I am his favourite pupil,’ said Angelo.

‘I’d have sworn it,’ groaned the innkeeper, and cursed the day and hour when Angelo crossed his threshold.  That done, he begged permission to be allowed to return, crying with tears of entreaty for mercy:  ’Barto Rizzo’s pupils are always out upon bloody business!’ Angelo told him that he had now an opportunity of earning the approval of Barto Rizzo, and then said, ‘On,’ and they went in the track of the two whitecoats; the innkeeper murmuring all the while that he wanted the approval of Barto Rizzo as little as his enmity; he wanted neither frost nor fire.  The glacier being traversed, they skirted a young stream, and arrived at an inn, where they found the soldiers regaling.  Jacopo was informed by them that the lady whom they were pursuing had not passed.  They pushed their wine for Angelo to drink:  he declined, saying that he had sworn not to drink before he had shot the chamois with the white cross on his back.

‘Come:  we’re two to one,’ they said, ‘and drink you shall this time!’

‘Two to two,’ returned Angelo:  ’here is my Jacopo, and if he doesn’t count for one, I won’t call him father-in-law, and the fellow living at Cles may have his daughter without fighting for her.’

‘Right so,’ said one of the soldiers, ’and you don’t speak bad German already.’

‘Haven’t I served in the ranks?’ said Angelo, giving a bugle-call of the reveille of the cavalry.

He got on with them so well that they related the object of their expedition, which was, to catch a runaway young rebel lady and hold her fast down at Cles for the great captain—­’unser tuchtiger Hauptmann.’

‘Hadn’t she a servant, a sort of rascal?’ Angelo inquired.

‘Right so; she had:  but the doe’s the buck in this chase.’

Angelo tossed them cigars.  The valley was like a tumbled mountain, thick with crags and eminences, through which the river worked strenuously, sinuous in foam, hurrying at the turns.  Angelo watched all the ways from a distant height till set of sun.  He saw another couple of soldiers meet those two at the inn, and then one pair went up toward the vale-head.  It seemed as if Vittoria had disconcerted them by having chosen another route.