"Should I be too inquisitive if I asked you to tell me a little something about him beforehand?"
"Certainly you ought to be told about him, and I will tell you. But it is a momentous secret to place in your keeping, Michel, and it makes it necessary for me to tell you another story. Do you know that I am going to place in your hands the fate of a man whom the police are hunting with all the energy and skill of which they are capable, and whose features and true name they have never succeeded in finding out in the six or seven years that have passed since he took up the Destatore's work? Tell me, my boy, have you never heard of the Piccinino and his band since you have been in Sicily?"
"It seems to me that I have. Yes, yes, uncle, my sister Mila has some fantastic stories about this Piccinino, who is the principal subject of conversation among the young silk-weavers of Catania. He is a redoubtable brigand, they say, who kidnaps women and kills men at the very gates of the city. I have never believed these fables."
"There is some truth at the bottom of all the popular legends," rejoined the monk. "The Piccinino exists and plies his trade. There are two men in him—the man whom the campieri pursue in vain, and the man whom no one dreams of suspecting. The man who leads hazardous expeditions and assembles, at a mysterious signal, all the nottoloni[3] of any consequence, scattered all over the island, to employ them in more or less worthy enterprises; and the man who lives not far from this place, in a pretty country house, free from all molestation, and with the reputation of an intelligent, peaceably disposed man, opposed to bloody strife and advanced opinions. Well, within an hour you will be in that man's presence, you will know his true name, you will know his features, and you will share with only two other persons outside of the band which he commands the responsibility of his secret. You see that I treat you as a man, my child, but one cannot realize the danger of another person until he has himself been exposed to it. Henceforth you will have to pay with your life for the slightest indiscretion, and, in addition, to commit something more than a dastardly act, a horrible crime, of which you will soon know the extent."
"All these warnings are unnecessary, uncle; it is enough for me to know that it would be an abuse of confidence."
"I believe it, and yet I am not so sure of your prudence that I do not feel that I must tell you everything which may increase it. Your father, Princess Agatha, perhaps your sister, and myself beyond any question—all of us—will have sacrificed life and honor for you, if you are false to the oath I require of you. Swear, therefore, upon all that you hold most sacred—upon the Holy Gospel—never to betray, even on the scaffold, the true name of the Piccinino."
"I swear it, uncle. Are you satisfied?"
"Yes."
"And will the Piccinino have the same confidence in my oath that you have?"
"Yes, although confidence is not a failing of his. But when I told him of your visit, I gave him guarantees which could not fail to satisfy him."