"The only thing that I have any reason to fear," rejoined Michel, calmly, "is that I may play the pedagogue inopportunely. That part is not suited to my years or my tastes. I will remind you, therefore, that if you had not incited my comments by a sort of persistence in questioning me, I should have spared you the infliction. As for your threats, I will not say that I consider myself able to defend myself as powerfully and calmly as you would be likely to attack me. I know that, at a whistle from you, an armed man would start up from behind every rock in the neighborhood. I trusted to your word, and I did not arm myself to walk with a man who offered me his hand, saying: 'Let us be friends.' But if my uncle is mistaken with respect to your loyalty, and if you have led me into a trap, or—as I should prefer to believe for your own sake—if the effect of this spot is to disturb your mind and make you irresponsible, I will none the less tell you what I think, and I will not stoop to flatter the shortcomings upon which you seem to plume yourself for my benefit."
As he concluded, Michel opened his cloak to show the bandit that he had not even a knife upon his person, then sat down, facing him, and looking him in the eye with the utmost coolness. It was the first time he had ever been in such a position, for which he had certainly had no time to prepare himself, and from which he was not at all sure of extricating himself unharmed; for as the moon, emerging from behind the Destatore's Cross, fell full upon the young bandit's face, Michel was no longer in doubt as to the ferocity and treachery of his expression. Nevertheless Pier-Angelo's son, the nephew of the intrepid Capuchin of Bel Passo, felt that his heart was untouched by fear, and that the first serious danger which threatened his young life found him proud and undaunted.
The Piccinino, seeing how near he was, and that his own face was so illuminated by the moon, tried for a moment the terrifying effect of his tiger-like eyes; but having failed to make Michel lower his, and detecting no sign of poltroonery in his face or attitude, he suddenly sat down beside him and took his hand.
"Upon my word," he said, "although I do my utmost to despise you and hate you, I cannot succeed; I fancy that you have sufficient penetration to guess that I would rather kill you than save you, as I have undertaken to do. You are an embarrassment to me in respect to certain illusions which you can readily imagine: you balk me in certain hopes which I cherished, and which I am by no means inclined to renounce. But I am not bound by my word simply, but by a certain sympathetic feeling for you which I cannot shake off. I should lie if I said that I love you, and that it is a pleasant occupation to me to defend your life. But I esteem you, and that is a good deal. I assure you, you did well to answer me as you did; for now I can confess to you that this place sometimes brings on fits of madness; and I have formed terrible resolutions here on many a momentous occasion. You were not safe with me a moment ago; and I should not care to hear you utter a certain name again. Let us not stay here any longer, and do you take this stiletto, which I offered you once before. A Sicilian ought always to be ready to use it, and to my mind it is utterly insane to go about unarmed in the position you are in."
"Let us go," said Michel, mechanically taking the proffered dagger. "My uncle says that time is important, and that they are waiting for us."
"Waiting for us?" cried the bandit, leaping to his feet. "Waiting for you, you mean! Damnation! I wish that yonder cross and this stone might both sink into the ground! Young man, you may believe that I am an atheist, and that my heart is hard; but if you think it is of ice——Here, put your hand to it, and learn that desire and will have their seat there as well as in the brain!"
He seized Michel's hand roughly, and held it to his breast. It was heaving with palpitations of such violence that one would have said that it was on the point of bursting.
But when they had quitted the ravine, and had left the Destatore's Cross behind them, the Piccinino began to hum, in a voice as sweet and pure as the breath of the night, a ballad in the Sicilian dialect, of which the refrain was:
"Wine makes madness, love makes folly; my nectar is the blood of cowards, my mistress is my rifle."
After this outburst of bravado, addressed to himself as well as to the ears of any Neapolitan police who might happen to be within hearing, the Piccinino began to talk with Michel in a remarkably self-possessed and tranquil strain. He discussed fine arts, literature, external politics, and the news of the day, with as much freedom, courtesy, and refinement as if they were in a salon or on a public promenade, and as if neither of them had any momentous affair on hand, any exciting subject to engross his thoughts.