"It is hard," he interrupted, "to bear everything in mind when one is young." His tone was quiet, decisive, as of one stating a fact of common knowledge; but the reproof cut me like a knife.
"The Princess has gone too?" I asked.
"She has gone. They are all gone. That is why it would have been better for her too that you had escaped."
I pondered this for a minute. "You mean," said I, "that—always supposing the Prince had not killed you in his rage—you would now be at her side?"
He nodded. "Still, she has Stephanu. Stephanu will do his best," I suggested.
"Against what, eh?" He put his poser to me, turning with angry eyes, but ended on a short laugh of contempt. "Do not try make-believe with me, O Englishman."
"There is one thing I know," said I, doggedly, "that the Princess is in trouble or danger. And a second thing I know, that you and Stephanu are her champions. But a third thing, which I do not know, is why you and Stephanu hate one another."
"And yet that should have been the easiest guess of the three," said he, rising abruptly and taking first a dozen paces toward the hut, then a dozen back to the shadow of the chestnut tree against the bole of which my head rested as he had laid me, having borne me thither from the sty.
"Campioni? That is a good word, and I thank you for it, Englishman. Yet you wonder why I hate Stephanu? Listen. Were you ever in Florence, in the Boboli gardens?"
"Never. But why?"