privy to too many secrets to be apprehended.  Nobody dares lay him by the heels for fear of what he will divulge; and the more you thwart him the more risk you run.  He might easily kill you in a rage; he thinks no more of stabbing a man than of skewering a sausage.  I grant you that your suspicions do him no wrong.  He would sell you in a moment to any one who would buy you.  But they are groundless; it is quite plain what he wants.  He sees that you are a foreigner of good birth and position; he knows you for a truant on an escapade.  Being certain that there will be hue and cry after you, a large reward offered, he means to keep you under his eye until the price is high enough to tempt him, then he will produce you and get the bounty.  Call him brigand, say he holds you to ransom, you will be right.  Meantime he will make you useful, as you will see when we are in Prato.  Me, too, he will use; but not as you might suppose.  His one passion is money, his besetting sins are gluttony and rage; he has no other appetites, I believe.  For myself, I shall serve him as well as I can, and I advise you to do the same.  Ways of escape will occur to us by-and-by.”

I could see that she was right.  Here was his plan—­infinitely creditable to him compared to the other.  I promised Virginia that I would humour him for the present; and just then the man himself came to us with two chickens, some cheese, a flat loaf, and a bottle of excellent red wine, grown (as he told me) upon the Grand Duke’s podere at Poggio a Cajano.  We had a cheerful meal, and separated for the night in high good humour.

CHAPTER XVI

VIRGINIA AND I FALL OUT, BUT ARE RECONCILED

I confess that I have never been able to feel the force of that argument which says, for example, that because a man is a sheep-stealer he must needs be a bad husband.  As well might one set out to prove that a parricide must inevitably prove an indifferent cook.  In the person of Fra Palamone, of whose scoundrelly proclivities I had had more than an inkling already, it is undoubtedly true that many agreeable qualities were to be found.  He was, to use my illustration again, an admirable cook; he was a good talker, a companionable man, a kindly host.  Having got my measure, as it were, and won of me by persuasion, what he had failed to win by force, he was sensible enough to see that, if he wished to keep me, he must curb his vile passion of rage.  And so, for a while, he did.

Trudging our road to Prato early in the morning, he was very gay.  Virginia stepped along by my side, a free-moving young creature who never seemed to tire; but he struck out in front of us, most of the time singing at the top of his voice very discreditable songs, or with a joke, salutation, sarcasm or criticism for everybody we passed on the way.  Wearying of this, because, as he said, it was poor work fencing with bunglers, he kept us closer company for the rest