After that he became more amicable and consented to explain things to Amédée: once a week the Cardinal San-Felice was in the habit of leaving the archbishop’s palace in the dress of a simple abbé; he became plain chaplain Bardolotti and made his way to a modest villa on the slopes of Mount Vomero, where he received a few intimate friends, and the secret letters which the initiated addressed him under his assumed name. But even in this vulgar disguise, he could feel no security—he could not be sure that his letters were not opened in the post, and begged therefore that nothing of any significance should be said in any letter and that the tone of a letter should in no way suggest his Eminence, or have in it the slightest trace of respect.
Now that he was let into the secret, Amédée smiled in his turn.
“‘Dear old cock’.... Let me think! What shall we say to the dear old cock?” joked the abbé, hesitating with pencil in hand. “Ah!... ‘I’ve got a funny old chap in tow!’ (Yes, yes! It’s all right! I know the kind of style.) ‘I’ll bring him along, so dig out a bottle or two of Falernian and to-morrow we three will have a party.’ ... Here! you sign too.”
“Perhaps I’d better not sign my own name.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter about yours,” returned Protos, and after the name of Amédée Fleurissoire he wrote the word Cave.[G]
“Oh, that’s very clever!”
“What! are you astonished at my signing the name Cave? Your head is full of nothing but the Vatican Cave. You must know, my good Monsieur Fleurissoire, that Cave is a Latin word too, and that it means BEWARE!”
All this was said in so potent and so strange a tone that poor Amédée felt a cold shiver run down his spine. It lasted only a second; Father Cave had already recovered his affability when he handed him the envelope on which he had just inscribed the Cardinal’s apocryphal address.
“Will you post it yourself? It’s more prudent; curés’ letters are opened. And now we’d better part; we mustn’t be seen together any longer. Let’s agree to meet to-morrow morning in the train that leaves for Naples at seven-thirty. Third class of course. I shall not be in this dress, naturally. What an idea! You must look out for just an ordinary Calabrian peasant. (I don’t want to have to cut my hair.) Good-bye! Good-bye!”
He went off, making little signs with his hand.