Chapter XXXIV: At the Fountain

When Mila descended the staircase cut in the rock, she saw a man sitting on the edge of the spring, but was not alarmed. Her heart was all full of love and hope, and the recollection of the dangers that threatened her was powerless to affect her. Even when she reached the brink of the spring, this man, whose back was turned to her, and whose head and body were enveloped in the long hooded cape which the common people wear,[8] did not arouse her suspicions; but when he turned and asked her in a soft voice if she would permit him to drink from her jug, she started; for it seemed to her that she recognized the voice, and she noticed that there was no one in sight, either above or below the fountain; that not a child was playing on the staircase as usual, in fact, that she was alone with this stranger, whose voice terrified her.

She pretended not to have heard him, hastily filled her jug, and prepared to go up again. But the stranger, reclining on the stones, either to bar her way or perhaps to rest more comfortably, said to her in the same caressing tone:

"Rebecca, will you refuse a drop of water to Jacob, the friend and servant of the family?"

"I do not know you," replied Mila, trying to assume a calm and indifferent tone. "Can you not put your lips to the cascade? You can drink from it much better than from a jug."

The stranger calmly passed his arms around Mila's legs, and compelled her to lean on his shoulder to avoid falling.

"Let me go," she said, terrified and angry, "or I will call for help. I have no time to jest with you, and I am not one of those who dally with every strange man they see. Let me go, I tell you, or I will shriek."

"Mila," said the unknown, throwing back his hood, "I am no stranger to you, although it is not long since we became acquainted. We have relations together which it is not in your power to break off, and which it is your duty not to refuse to recognize. The life, fortune, and honor of those who are dearest to you on earth rest on my zeal and my loyalty. I have something to say to you; give me your jug, so that if anyone is watching it will not seem unnatural that you should have stopped here a moment with me."

On recognizing the mysterious guest of the previous night, Mila was subjugated as it were by a sort of dread not unmingled with respect. For we must tell the whole truth: Mila was a woman, and the Piccinino's beauty, his youth, his expression and his soft voice did not fail to exert a secret influence upon her sensitive and slightly romantic instincts.

"My lord," she said to him, for it was impossible not to take him for a nobleman in disguise, "I will obey you; but do not detain me by force, and speak more quickly, for this situation is not without danger to us both."

She handed him her jug, from which he drank without haste; for, meanwhile, he held the girl's lovely bare arm in his hand and gazed upon its beautiful shape, pressing it at the same time to force her to tip the jug gradually, as he quenched his real or pretended thirst.

"Now, Mila," he said, covering his face, which he had left uncovered for her to admire, "listen to me! The monk who frightened you yesterday will come here again as soon as your father and brother have gone out: they are to dine to-day with the Marquis della Serra. Do not try to keep them at home on any account; if they should stay at home, if they should see the monk, if they should try to drive him away, it would be the signal for some disaster which I could not prevent. If you are prudent and devoted to your family, you will even spare the monk the danger of showing himself in your house. You will come here as if to wash; I know that, before going into the house, he will prowl about here and will try to surprise you outside of your yard, for he is afraid of the neighbors. Do not be afraid of him; he is a coward, and he will never attempt to use violence with you in broad daylight, or when he is in any danger of being discovered. He will talk to you again of his ignoble desires. Cut the conversation short; but pretend that you have changed your mind. Tell him to go away because you are watched; but make an appointment with him for twenty o'clock[9] at a place which I will indicate, and whither you must go alone, an hour earlier. I will be there. You will run no risk therefore. I will take charge of the monk, and you will never hear of him again. You will be delivered from a detestable persecutor, Princess Agatha will no longer be in danger of being dishonored by shocking calumnies; your father will no longer have the threat of imprisonment hanging over him, and your brother Michel that of the assassin's dagger."

"Great God! great God!" said Mila, panting with fear and surprise, "this monk is so ill-disposed toward us and able to injure us so! Is he Abbé Ninfo?"

"Speak lower, girl, and do not let that accursed name reach the ears that surround you to-day. Be calm; seem to know nothing and to be doing nothing. If you say a word of all this to anybody, no matter who it may be, you will be prevented from saving those whom you love. You will be told to distrust me, because your own prudence and strength of will are distrusted. Who knows if I shall not be taken for your enemy? I am not afraid of anyone, but I am afraid that my friends will destroy themselves by their indecision. You alone can save them, Mila! Will you do it?"

"Yes, I will," she said; "but what will become of me if you are deceiving me? if you do not keep the appointment?"

"Why, don't you know who I am?"

"No, I do not know; no one was willing to tell me."

"Look at me, then; venture to examine me carefully, and you will know me better from my face than all those people do who have spoken to you about me."

He put aside his hood, and was able to give to his handsome face so reassuring and affectionate and gentle an expression, that the simple-hearted Mila yielded to its dangerous influence.

"It seems to me," she said, with a blush, "that you are kind and honest; if the devil is in you, he has put on the mask of an angel."

_She handed him her jug, from which he drank without haste; for, meanwhile, he held the girl's lovely bare arm in his hand and gazed upon its beautiful shape, pressing it at the same time to force her to tip the jug gradually, as he quenched his real or pretended thirst._]

The Piccinino closed his hood to conceal the sensuous gratification afforded him by that artless confession from the loveliest lips in the world.

"Very well," he replied, "follow your instinct. Obey only the promptings of your heart; let me tell you, moreover, that your uncle at Bel Passo brought me up as his son, that your dear Princess Agatha has placed her fortune and her honor in my hands, and that, if she were not a woman, that is to say a bit of a prude, she would have made this most essential appointment with Abbé Ninfo."

"But I am a woman too," said Mila, "and I am afraid. Why is this appointment so essential?"

"Don't you know that I am to kidnap Abbé Ninfo? How can I seize him in the streets of Catania, or at the gates of Villa Ficarazzi? Must I not lure him out of his den, and lead him into a trap? His evil fate ordained that he should fall insanely in love with you."

"Oh! don't use the word love in connection with such a man; it makes me shudder. And you want me to make a pretence of encouraging him! I shall die of shame and disgust."

"Farewell, Mila," said the bandit, pretending to rise. "I see that you are a woman like other women, after all, a weak, vain creature, who thinks only of saving herself, utterly heedless of the calumnies and blows that may fall upon the heads which should be most sacred to her!"

"No, no, I am not like that!" she replied proudly. "I will sacrifice my life in this experiment; as for my honor, I shall find a way to die before it is stained."

"Good, good, my brave girl! Now you are talking as Fra Angelo's niece should talk. You see that I am perfectly undisturbed on your account, however, because I know that you are in no danger."

"But are not you in danger, my lord? If you fall, who will protect me against this monk?"

"A dagger thrust--not in your beautiful bosom, my poor angel, as you threaten, but in the throat of a vile beast, who is not worthy to die by a woman's hand, and who will never expose himself to that risk."

"Where must I agree to meet him?"

"At Nicolosi, at the house of Carmelo Tomabene, farmer, who, you will tell him, is your friend and kinsman. You will add that he is absent, that you have the keys of his house, and that there is a large sheltered garden which he can enter, unseen by anyone, by going down through the ravine of the _Destatore's Cross_. Can you remember all that?"

"Perfectly; and will he go?"

"He will go without any doubt, and without a suspicion that this Carmelo Tomabene is on very intimate terms with a certain Piccinino, who is said to be a leader of bandits, and to whom, only yesterday, he offered a princely fortune on condition that he would kidnap your brother and at need murder him."

"Blessed Madonna, protect me! The Piccinino! I have heard of him; he is a terrible man. Will he be there with you? I should die of fright if I saw him!"

"And yet," said the bandit, overjoyed to find that Mila knew so little of what was going on, "I will wager that, like all the girls in the neighborhood, you are dying with the longing to see him."

"I should rather like to see him, because they say he is so ugly! But I should want to be sure that he did not see me!"

"Never fear; there will be nobody but myself at the farmer's house in Nicolosi. Tell me, are you afraid of me too, child that you are? Have I a very dreadful, very wicked look?"

"No, indeed you have not! But why must I keep the appointment? Won't it be enough if I send the abbé--I mean the monk?"

"He is suspicious, like all criminals; he will never go into Carmelo Tomabene's garden unless he sees you walking there all alone. By going there an hour in advance of the time fixed, you run no risk of meeting him on the road; at all events, go by the Bel Passo road, which you probably know better than the other. Have you ever been to Nicolosi?"

"Never, my lord; is it a very long way?"

"Too far for your little feet, Mila; but you can cling to a mule's back, can't you?"

"Oh! yes, I think so."

"You will find a perfectly safe, gentle beast behind Villa Palmarosa. A child will bring it to you, with a white rose for countersign. Drop the reins on the trusty creature's neck, and have no fear, but let him go as fast as he will. In less than an hour he will bring you to my gate, without once missing the way or taking a false step, however horrible the road he selects may seem to you. You won't be afraid, Mila?"

"And suppose I should meet the abbé?"

"Lash your beast, and don't be afraid that anyone will overtake you."

"But if I am to go by way of Bel Passo, you will surely allow my uncle to escort me?"

"No, your uncle has business elsewhere for the same good cause; but, if you notify him, he will insist upon accompanying you. If he sees you, he will follow you, and our whole undertaking will have come to naught. I have no time to tell you more. I think that I hear some one calling you. You hesitate; does that mean that you refuse?"

"I am not hesitating; I will go! My lord, do you believe in God?"

This abrupt and ingenuous question made the Piccinino turn pale and smile at the same time.

"Why do you ask me that?" he said, pulling his hood over his face.

"Ah! you know why?" said she. "God hears and sees everything. He punishes falsehood and assists innocence!"

Again they heard Pier-Angelo's voice, calling his daughter.

"Go," said the Piccinino, supporting her with his hands, to assist her to mount the staircase quickly; "remember, if a single word escapes you, we are lost."

"You too?"

"I too!"

"That would be a pity," thought Mila, turning at the top of the staircase to cast a last glance at the comely stranger, of whom it was impossible not to make a hero and a friend of the first order, and whom, in her joyous imagination, she placed beside Agatha. He had such a soft voice and such a sweet smile! His tone was so noble, his authoritative air so convincing! "I will be brave and discreet," she said. "I am only a little girl, and yet I am the one who is to save everybody's life!" In all times, alas! the sparrow has yielded to the fascination of the vulture.

In all this the Piccinino gave way to an inborn passion for increasing the difficulties of an adventure to his profit, or simply for amusement. To be sure, he had no better way of enticing Abbé Ninfo to his house than by offering a bait to his lust. But he might well have chosen some other woman than the innocent Mila to play, with the aid of some slight resemblance or of a similar costume, the part of the person who was to appear in his garden. The abbé was sometimes insultingly suspicious, because he was a horrible coward; but, blinded by ridiculous presumption, and impelled by lecherous impatience, he would have fallen into the trap. A little violence, a man stationed behind the gate, would have sufficed to place him in the bandit's hands. There were many other ruses to which the Piccinino was accustomed to resort, and which might have succeeded as well; for the abbé, with all his scheming, his inquisitiveness, his incessant espionage, his impudent falsehoods and his shameless persistence, was a villain of the lowest order, and the stupidest and least adroit man on earth. People are too much afraid of knaves as a general rule; they do not know that the majority of them are fools. Abbé Ninfo would not have had to take half the trouble to do twice the harm, if he had had ever so little intelligence and real penetration.

For instance, we have seen that he was always beside the truth in his discoveries. He had assumed innumerable disguises and invented a thousand time-worn methods of watching what was taking place at Villa Palmarosa; and he was thoroughly persuaded that Michel was the princess's lover. He was a hundred leagues from suspecting the nature of the tie between them. He might easily have deceived Doctor Recuperati, whose unswerving uprightness lacked foresight and intelligence; and yet, desiring to steal the will from him, he had delayed from day to day, and had never succeeded in gaining his confidence in the slightest degree. It was impossible for him to play for five minutes the rôle of a well-meaning man, his face bore so unmistakably the stamp of unalloyed and unbounded baseness.

His vices embarrassed him, as he himself admitted, even proclaimed, when he was intoxicated. Dissolute, avaricious, and so intemperate that he fuddled his brain when lucidity was most essential to him, he had conducted a difficult intrigue to a successful end. The cardinal had for a long time made use of him as a police agent for whom no task was too vile, and he had never valued him except as a tool of the lowest order. In his days of cynical wit, the prelate had branded him with an epithet which we shall not attempt to translate, and from which he had never been able to rise.

Thus he had had no share in the family affairs and secrets of State which had filled the life of Monsignor Hieronymo. The contempt which he inspired in his master had survived his loss of memory, and the aged prelate, paralyzed and almost in his dotage, was not even afraid of him, and recovered the power of speech with him only to call him by the degrading sobriquet which he had previously bestowed on him.

Another proof of the abbé's idiocy was his cherished conviction that he could seduce all the women who aroused his desires.

"With a little money and a lot of lies," he would say, "with threats, compliments and promises, a man can obtain the proudest or the humblest of them."

Consequently he flattered himself that he could obtain a share of Agatha's fortune by effecting the removal of the man whom he presumed to be her lover. He was capable of but one thing, of placing Michel at the muzzle of a bandit's gun, and shouting _fire_! in a moment of disappointed vanity and greed; he would not have dared to kill him himself, just as he would not have dared to do violence to Mila, if she had threatened him with nothing more than a pair of scissors.

But, abject wretch that he was, he had a certain power for evil; it did not spring from him, the villainy of other men had invested him with it. The Neapolitan police lent him its dastardly and odious assistance when he requested it. He had caused many innocent victims to be exiled, ruined, or cast into dungeons, and he might very well have seized Michel without having recourse to the brigands of the mountain. But he wished to be able to surrender him, at need, for a heavy ransom, and he wished to have the terms of ransom discussed by avowed brigands, whose interest it would be not to betray him. His whole rôle consisted in seeking out the _bravi_ and saying to them: "I have discovered a love intrigue which is worth something. Do the job, and we will divide the profits."

But herein again he had been gulled. A shrewd _bravo_, who _worked_ in the city under the Piccinino's direction, and who would not have presumed to do anything without consulting him, had deceived the abbé by inviting him to a rendezvous at which he had not seen the real Piccinino, who was present, however, behind a partition. The Piccinino had thereupon threatened to break the head of the first of the two accomplices who should say a word or take a step without orders from him, and they knew that he was a man to keep his word. Indeed, the young adventurer governed his band with such extraordinary skill, with a mixture of gentleness and despotism so well blended, that his father had not been so loved and dreaded as he was, although, to be sure, he had acted upon a larger scale and his enterprises had been more extensive. He could be perfectly at ease, therefore; his secrets would not have been revealed under torture, and he was able to gratify the caprice which he frequently had, of carrying out entirely alone, without a confidant and without assistance, an undertaking in which he had no need of using main force, but only of craft and strategy.

That is why the Piccinino, sure of the success of his plan, which was of the simplest, chose to blend with it, on his own account, poetic, strange, and romantic incidents, or real passions, according to his whim. His vivid imagination and his cold nature involved him constantly in contradictory enterprises, from which he was always able to extricate himself, thanks to his great intelligence and his self-control. He had always sailed his craft so skilfully that, outside of his accomplices and the very small number of his intimate friends, no one could have proved that the famous captain, Piccinino, natural son of the _Destatore_, and the placid villager Carmelo Tomabene were one and the same man. The latter also was supposed to be a son of Castro-Reale; but there were so many others in the mountains who prided themselves upon that perilous origin!

[Footnote 8: It is a double woolen _surtout_, of several different colors inside and out. It is worn as a protection against the sun's heat as well as against the cold.]

[Footnote 9: That is to say, four hours before nightfall.]