“Exciting me? What do you mean? Why should I be excited? Have I been hanging rogues so few as to start at the mention of a noose? Tell me how you managed it, my dear excellent old devil.”
“Well, I will. There are points you mayn’t approve; but the end must justify the means. Listen, then. I could not make our friend eligible in the way I proposed. But still I was his matrimonial agent—you remember the term, it was your own? As such my duty to him, my duty to myself, demanded renewed enterprise on my part. You, who have expressed an eagerness no less than mine to secure this match, will, I hope, condone, even approve, the advantage I took of a report concerning yourself to realise our common wish.”
“A report? What was that?”
“Why, that you yourself was a suitor for the hand of the lady.”
“Yes? and the advantage you took of that same veracious legend?”
“It may have been a legend: it was certainly an opportunity. What did I do? Why—forgive me, sir—I simply went and repeated it, for what it was worth, to the Signorina Brambello, and left the leaven to ferment. The result was quite astonishing. She ran straight off, it appears, in a pet of jealousy to the lady; induced her to return with her to the bedside of her stricken gallant (by which, or thereabouts, it seems our Madam spent the night), and married the two incontinent the next morning at a neighbouring Chapel (called, somewhat appropriately, la Maddalena), giving herself and another for witness. Now, am I to be congratulated or not? A word in season hath accomplished what all your theories of pretty heartenings and reassurances had failed to. You appealed to the signorina’s sympathies; I to a baser but more practical sentiment. Acknowledge who was the better sophist.”
Cartouche clapped him on the shoulder.
“You, you, my Bonito. The credit is all yours, and the triumph. I will not forget it. I will not overlook your part in this happy consummation.”
Bonito grinned.
“Nor your innamorata’s, eh, Mr Trix? Egad! she’s a name in Turin to-day. She might command—but, there! these reports are not for my lips.”