"I give you half an hour, my son, if you absolutely need it; half an hour is a long while for the blood that flows in your veins! then we will all three start."
"Who is this youngster, pray?" said the Piccinino, indicating Michel with the end of his finger, but without removing his eyes from the wall.
"He is my nephew, as I have told you; and Fra Angelo's nephew is to be relied on. But he doesn't know the country, and has not the necessary connections for an affair of this sort."
"Is the signorino afraid of compromising himself?"
"No, signor!" cried Michel, irritated beyond endurance, and unable to bear longer the bandit's insolence and the restraint which his uncle imposed upon him. The bandit turned, looked him in the face with his long eyes, which seemed to turn up a little toward the temples, and whose mocking expression was sometimes intolerable. But when he saw Michel's animated face and pale lips, he assumed a more amiable expression, albeit a little suspicious still, and said, offering him his hand:
"Let us be friends, at all events, until we have no other enemies on our hands; that is our wisest course."
As Michel was seated at some distance, he would have had to rise to take that hand, extended with a kingly gesture. He smiled and did not move, at the risk of displeasing his uncle and losing the fruit of their expedition.
But the monk was not sorry to see Michel adopt that attitude with respect to the bandit. The latter understood that he had no weak-spirited creature to deal with, and, rising with an effort, he went to him and took his hand.
"You are cruel, my young master," he said, "to refuse to take two steps toward a man who is completely tired out. You haven't travelled twenty leagues to-day, and you insist upon my starting off again when I have had barely two hours' rest!"
"At your age," said the unrelenting monk, "I used to walk twenty leagues a day, and not take time to sup before starting again. Well, have you decided? Shall we start?"