When the door had closed upon her, Luigi resumed his station near it, warily casting his glances along the house-fronts, and moving his springy little legs like a heath-cock alert.  They carried him sharp to an opposite corner of the street at a noise of some one running exposed to all eyes right down the middle of the road, straight to the house:  in which foolish person he discerned Beppo, all of whose proceedings Luigi observed and commented on from the safe obscurity under eaves and starlight, while Beppo was in the light of the lamps.  ’You thunder at the door, my Beppo.  You are a fire-balloon:  you are going to burn yourself up with what you carry.  You think you can do something, because you read books and frequent the talking theatres—­fourteen syllables to a word.  Mother of heaven! will you never learn anything from natural intelligence?  There you are, in at the door.  And now you will disturb the signorina, and you will do nothing but make la Lazzeruola’s ears lively.  Bounce! you are up the stairs.  Bounce! you are on the landing.  Thrum! you drum at the door, and they are singing; they don’t hear you.  And now you’re meek as a mouse.  That’s it—­if you don’t hit the mark when you go like a bullet, you ’re stupid as lead.  And they call you a clever fellow!  Luigi’s day is to come.  When all have paid him all round, they will acknowledge Luigi’s worth.  You are honest enough, my Beppo; but you might as well be a countryman.  You are the signorina’s servant, but I know the turnings, said the rat to the cavaliere weazel.’

In a few minutes Beppo stepped from the house, and flung himself with his back against the lintel of the doorway.

‘That looks like determination to stop on guard,’ said Luigi.

He knew the exact feeling expressed by it, when one has come violently on an errand and has done no good.

‘A flea, my feathery lad, will set you flying again.’

As it was imperative in Luigi’s schemes that Beppo should be set flying again, he slipped away stealthily, and sped fast into the neighbouring Corso, where a light English closed carriage, drawn by a pair of the island horses, moved at a slow pace.  Two men were on the driver’s seat, one of whom Luigi hailed to come down then he laid a strip of paper on his knee, and after thumping on the side of his nose to get a notion of English-Italian, he wrote with a pencil, dancing upon one leg all the while for a balance:—­

   ’Come, Beppo, daughter sake, now, at once, immediate,
   Beppo, signor.’

’That’s to the very extremity how the little signora Inglese would write,’ said Luigi; yet cogitating profoundly in a dubitative twinkle of a second as to whether it might not be the English habit to wind up a hasty missive with an expediting oath.  He had heard the oath of emphasis in that island:  but he decided to let it go as it stood.  The man he had summoned was directed to take it straightway and deliver it to one who would be found at the house-door of the Maestro Rocco Ricci.