“I cannot hear you say that, Belviso,” I told him, “without giving you warning that, so long as I am in your company, and to the utmost of my powers, I shall restrain you from being anything of the sort.”

He started, looked at me for a moment, then kissed my hand.  “I believe our Saviour sent you here to be his vicar in my regard,” he said.  “I don’t know how long you may be in my company, for it depends mostly upon yourself.  But I promise you in my turn that I shall never take ill whatsoever your honour may please to say to me; and I say that if I have the misfortune to lose sight of you this very night, I shall be the better for having known you, and shall go to sleep with more prospect of a decent to-morrow than I have ever done in the whole of my life.”

I judged that the best thing for this youth was to think more about my misfortunes than his own.  I therefore told him how it was that I came before him in this plight, barefoot, bareheaded, bleeding and in rags.  I told him of my concern for Virginia, of the deadly perils that beset her, and concluded by assuring him that the one service of any moment which he could do me was to devise me some means of communicating with Gioiachino, the vendor of cat’s-meat in Lucca.  Belviso had put his head between his knees, and so remained for some time after I had done speaking, in earnest meditation.

After a while he lifted up his face, and said, “I shall go to Lucca for you, Don Francis.  It is certain that you must not cross the frontier, and equally certain that there is no other person here who could strive more heartily to help you.  But I dare not myself go alone.  I shall get Il Nanno to go with me—­a very good old fellow and as shrewd as a winter wind.  We shall disguise ourselves, of course, and be off before dawn to-morrow.  He shall go as my wife.”

“Your wife, my dear!” I exclaimed.  “I should like to know what old fellow could play the woman beside you.”  “Seeing that I get my living by so doing, I don’t mind owning that there is no one,” he agreed.  “The trouble is that I should do it too well.  When you see Il Nanno you will admit that my proposals are as prudent as they seem the reverse.  I’ll go and fetch him, and you shall judge.  Remember always that his name is Aristarcho; it would be a mortal affront to use that nickname of ours, for he is sensitive to a degree, like all these hunchbacks, and as fierce as a wild cat.  Stay here—­I will bring him up to you.”  He disappeared into the house, and presently returned, followed by his proposed wife.

Signor Aristarcho was a dwarf of the most repulsive and uncompromising type.  He cannot have been much more than four feet in height; he had a head nearly as large as his body, the strong-jawed, big-nosed, slit-mouthed head of some Condottiere of old, some Fortebraccio or Colleone of history and equestrian statuary.  His eyes were small, staring, but extremely intelligent, his flesh spare and strained under the