CHAPTER XIX
On the following morning Castiglione’s orderly had a severe shock. The Captain had been in the saddle early, and hard at work, and as it had rained heavily on the previous day and night, he and his charger had come in looking as if they had taken a mud-bath together. If Castiglione had known Greek, he might have thought of Hector declining Hecuba’s invitation to go up and pray at the temple of Zeus, on the ground that he was not fit to be seen. The orderly was doing what he could for boots and breeches when the bell rang. He opened the door and beheld an old Capuchin monk whose gaunt head towered far above his own. But this was not what surprised him, for mendicant brothers and nuns of various charitable Orders came at intervals to ask for alms at every landing of the apartment house. When Castiglione was in, he gave them a few pennies; his chum rarely gave anything. To-day Castiglione was at home and his friend was out; this meant pennies.
‘I will ask the Captain,’ said the trooper civilly, leaving the door open and turning to go into the sitting-room.
Then came the shock.
‘Excuse me, but I wish to see the Conte del Castiglione on private business,’ said the monk. ‘Be good enough to give him my card.’
Now the trooper was a young man who came of decent people in Umbria, and had been brought up in the fear of God, and went to hear a mass now and then on a Sunday when he had time. But the idea that a bare-footed friar could ever, under any conceivable circumstances, have private business with an officer of the Piedmont Lancers had never presented itself to him. He stood staring at the card like an idiot.
‘That is my name,’ the monk said impatiently. ‘Padre Bonaventura of the Capuchins.’
‘I can read,’ answered the orderly, offended.
‘But apparently,’ retorted the monk, ‘you cannot walk. Now take my card to the Captain, and say that I must see him on private business of the utmost importance to him, and at once. Right about face, march!’