"I don't threaten you, Master Georgio," rejoined Benvenuto, "I warn you."
"Do you still hope to fly away?"
"Luckily it isn't a mere hope, but downright certainty, pardieu!"
"Demonio! how will you do it?" cried the poor governor, dismayed beyond measure by Benvenuto's real or pretended confidence in his means of escape.
"That's my secret, master. But I give you fair warning that my wings are growing."
The governor instinctively turned his eye upon the prisoner's shoulders.
"'T is thus," continued Benvenuto, working away at his statue, and rounding the hips in such fashion that one would have thought he proposed to rival the Venus Callipyge. "Betwixt us there is a duel impending. You have on your side enormous towers, thick doors, strong bolts, innumerable keepers always on the alert; I have on my side my brain, and these poor hands, and I warn you very frankly that you will be beaten. But as you are a very clever man, as you have taken every possible precaution, you will at least, when I am gone, have the consolation of knowing that it is through no fault of yours, Master Georgio, that you have no occasion to reproach yourself at all, Master Georgio, and that you neglected nothing that could help you to detain me, Master Georgio. And now what say you to this hip, for you are a lover of art, I know."
Such unblushing assurance enraged the unhappy official. His prisoner had become his fixed idea, upon which all his faculties were centred. He grew melancholy, lost his appetite, and started constantly, like one suddenly aroused from sleep. One night Benvenuto heard a great noise upon the platform; then it was transferred to his corridor, and finally stopped at his door. The door opened, and he saw Master Georgio, in dressing-gown and nightcap, attended by four jailers and eight guards. The governor rushed to his bedside with distorted features. Benvenuto sat up in bed and laughed in his face. The governor, without taking offence at his hilarity, breathed like a diver returning to the surface.
"Ah! God be praised!" he cried; "he is still here! There's much good sense in the saying, Songe—mensonge" (Dream—lie).
"In God's name, what's the matter?" demanded Benvenuto, "and what happy circumstance affords me the pleasure of a visit from you at such an hour, Master Georgio?"