‘Thus, like a drunken sentinel,’ said Luigi, folding his arms, crossing his legs, and leaning back.  ‘Forward, Matteo, my cherub.’

‘All goes right?’ the coachman addressed Luigi.

’As honey, as butter, as a mulberry leaf with a score of worms on it!  The wine and the bread and the cream-cheeses are inside, my dainty one, are they?  She must not starve, nor must I. Are our hampers fastened out side?  Good.  We shall be among the Germans in a day and a night.  I ’ve got the route, and I pronounce the name of the chateau very perfectly—­“Schloss Sonnenberg.”  Do that if you can.’

The unpractised Italian coachman declined to attempt it.  He and Luigi compared time by their watches.  In three-quarters of an hour he was to be within hail of the maestro’s house.  Thither Luigi quietly returned.

Beppo’s place there was vacant.

‘That’s better than a draught of Asti,’ said Luigi.

The lighted windows of the maestro’s house, and the piano striking corrective notes, assured him that the special rehearsal was still going on; and as he might now calculate on two or three minutes to spare, he threw back his coat-collar, lifted his head, and distended his chest, apparently to chime in with the singing, but simply to listen to it.  For him, it was imperative that he should act the thing, in order to apprehend and appreciate it.

A hurried footing told of the approach of one whom he expected.

‘Luigi!’

‘Here, padrone.’

‘You have the chocolate?’

‘Signor Antonio, I have deposited it in the carriage.’

‘She is in up there?’

‘I beheld her entering.’

‘Good; that is fixed fact.’  The Signor Antonio drove at his moustache right and left.  ’I give you, see, Italian money and German money:  German money in paper; and a paper written out by me to explain the value of the German paper-money.  Silence, engine that you are, and not a man!  I am preventive of stupidity, I am?  Do I not know that, hein?  Am I in need of the acclamation of you, my friend?  On to the Chateau Sonnenberg:—­drive on, drive on, and one who stops you, you drive over him:  the gendarmes in white will peruse this paper, if there is any question, and will pass you and the cage, bowing; you hear?  It is a pass; the military pass you when you show this paper.  My good friend, Captain Weisspriess, on the staff of General Pierson, gives it, signed, and it is effectual.  But you lose not the paper:  put it away with the paper-money, quite safe.  For yourself, this is half your pay—­I give you napoleons; ten.  Count.  And now—­once at the Chateau Sonnenberg, I repeat, you leave her in charge of two persons, one a woman, at the gate, and then back—­frrrrr..’

Antonio-Pericles smacked on the flat of his hand, and sounded a rapid course of wheels.

’Back, and drop not a crumb upon the road.  You have your map.  It is, after Roveredo, straight up the Adige, by Bolzano . . . say “Botzen."’