"Your Excellency can count on me!" cried the coachman, his eyes ablaze with the most passionate devotion; "where does His Excellency wish to go?"
"To Ferrara.
I have a passport, but I should prefer not to speak to the police, who may have received information of what has happened."
"When did you despatch this fellow?"
"This morning, at six o'clock."
"Your Excellency has no blood on his clothes, has he," asked the landlady.
"I was thinking of that," put in the coachman, "and besides, the cloth of that coat is too fine; you don't see many like that in the country round here, it would make -people stare at us; I shall go and buy some clothes from the Jew.
Your Excellency is about my figure, only thinner."
"For pity's sake, don't go on calling me Excellency, it may attract attention."
"Very good, Excellency," replied the coachman, as he left the tavern.
"Here, here," Fabrizio called after him, "and what about the money!
Come back!"
"What do you mean—money!" said the landlady; "he has sixty-seven scudi which are entirely at your service.
I myself," she went on, lowering her voice, "have forty scudi which I offer you with the best will in the world; one doesn't always have money on one when these accidents happen."
On account of the heat, Fabrizio had taken off his coat on entering the Trattoria.
"You have a waistcoat on you which might land us in trouble if anyone came in: that fine English cloth would attract attention."
She gave our fugitive a stuff waistcoat, dyed black, which belonged to her husband.
A tall young man came into the tavern by an inner door; he was dressed with a certain style.
"This is my husband," said the landlady. "Pietro-Antonio," she said to her husband, "this gentleman is a friend of Ludovico; he met with an accident this morning, across the river, and he wants to get away to Ferrara."
"Oh, we'll get him there," said the husband with an air of great gentility; "we have Carlo-Giuseppe's boat."
Owing to another weakness in our hero which we shall confess as naturally as we have related his fear in the police office at the end of the bridge, there were tears in his eyes; he was profoundly moved by the perfect devotion which he found among these contadini; he thought also of this characteristic generosity of his aunt; he would have liked to be able to make these people's fortune.
Lodovico returned, carrying a packet.
"So that's finished," the husband said to him in a friendly tone.
"It's not that," replied Lodovico in evident alarm, "people are beginning to talk about you, they noticed that you hesitated before turning down our vicolo and leaving the big street, like a man who was trying to hide."
"Go up quick to the bedroom," said the husband.
This room, which was very large and fine, had grey cloth instead of glass in its two windows; it contained four beds, each six feet wide and five feet high.
"Be quick! Be quick!" said Lodovico, "there is a swaggering fool of a constable who has just been posted here and began trying to make love to the pretty lady downstairs; and I've told him that when he goes travelling about the country he may find himself stopping a bullet.
If the dog hears any mention of Your Excellency, he'll want to do us a bad turn, he will try to arrest you here, so as to get Teodolinda's Trattoria a bad name.
"What's this?" Lodovico went on, seeing Fabrizio's shirt all stained with blood and his wounds bandaged with handkerchiefs, "so the porco shewed fight, did he?
That's a hundred times more that you need to get yourself arrested, and I haven't bought you any shirt."
Without ceremony he opened the husband's wardrobe and gave one of his shirts to Fabrizio, who was soon attired like a prosperous countryman.
Lodovico took down a net that was hanging on the wall, placed Fabrizio's clothes in the basket in which the fish are put, went downstairs at a run and hastened out of the house by a back door; Fabrizio followed him.
"Teodolinda," he called out as he passed by the bar, "hide . what I've left upstairs, we are going to wait among the willows, and you, Pietro-Antonio, send us a boat quickly, we'll pay well for it."
Lodovico led Fabrizio across more than a score of ditches. There were planks, very long and very elastic, which served as bridges across the wider of these ditches; Lodovico took up these planks after crossing by them.
On coming to the last canal he took up the plank with haste.
"Now we can stop and breathe," he said; "that dog of a constable will have to go two leagues and more to reach Your Excellency.
Why, you're quite pale," he said to Fabrizio; "I haven't forgotten the little bottle of brandy."
"It comes in most useful; the wound in my thigh is beginning to hurt me; and besides, I was in a fine fright in the police office by the bridge."
"I can well believe it," said Lodovico; "with a shirt covered in blood, as yours was, I can't conceive how you ever even dared to set foot in such a place.
As for your wounds, I know what to do; I am going to put you in a cool place where you can sleep for an hour; the boat will come for us there, if there is any way of getting a boat; if not, when you have rested a little, we shall go on two short leagues, and I shall take you to a mill where I shall take a boat myself.
Your Excellency knows far more than I do: the Signora will be in despair when she hears of the accident; they will tell her that you are mortally wounded, perhaps even that you killed the other man by foul play.
The Marchesa Raversi will not fail to circulate all the evil reports that can hurt the Signora.
Your Excellency might write."
"And how should I get the letter delivered?"
"The boys at the mill where we are going earn twelve soldi a day; in a day and a half they can be at Parma; say four francs for the journey, two francs for the wear and tear of their shoe-leather: if the errand was being done for a poor man like me, that would be six francs; as it is in the service of a Signore, I shall give them twelve."
When they had reached the resting-place in a clump of alders and willows, very leafy and very cool, Lodovico went to a house more than an hour's journey away in search of ink and paper.
"Great heavens, how comfortable I am here," cried Fabrizio. "Fortune, farewell!
I shall never be an Archbishop!"
On his return, Lodovico found him fast asleep and did not like to arouse him.
The boat did not arrive until the sun had almost set; as soon as Lodovico saw it appear in the distance he called Fabrizio, who wrote a couple of letters.