The queer, far little mutter seemed to reel and swerve into a tinkle—an echo—was gone. Carlo called, and called again—no answer. Then he set himself to ruminate—a cud of gall and poison.
On the eighth morning of his confinement, Jacopo, in person and alone, suddenly showed himself at the door, which he threw wide open.
'Free, Messer,' he said; 'and summoned under urgency to the palace.'
Carlo nodded, and asked not a single question, receiving even his weapons back in silence. He had had a certain presentiment that this moment would arrive. He begged only that the Provost Marshal would leave him to himself a minute. He had some thanks to offer up, he said, with a smile, which had been better understood and dreaded by a gentler soul.
The master gaoler was a religious man, and acquiesced willingly, going forward a little up the stairway, that the other might be private. Carlo, thereupon, stepped across to the wall, and whispered for Messer Topo.
The big rat responded at once, coming out and sitting up at attention. Carlo put his hands under his shoulders, and lifting him (the two were by now on the closest terms of intimacy), apostrophised him face to face:—
'My true, mine only friend at last,' he said (his voice was thick and choking). 'I must go, leaving him to thee. Be reverent with him for my sake—ah! if I return not anon, to carry out and plant that sweet corse in the daisied grass he loved—not dust to dust, but flower to the dear flowers. Look to it. Shall I never see him more—nor thee? I know not. I've that to do first may part us to eternity—yet must I do it. Come, kiss me God-be-with-ye. Nay, that's a false word. How can He, and this bloody ensign on my brow? My brain in me doth knell already like a leper's bell. Canst hear it, red-eyes? No God for me. Why should I need Him—tell me that? Christ could not save His friend. I must go alone—quite alone at last. Only remember I loved thee—always remember that. And so, thou fond and pretty thing, farewell.'
He put his lips to the little furry head; put the animal gently down; longed to it a moment; then, as it disappeared into its run, turned with a wet and burdened sigh.
But, even with the sound, a black and gripping frost seemed to fall upon him. He drew himself up, set his face to the door, and passed out and on to freedom and the woful deed he contemplated.
CHAPTER XXIV