"I am not hesitating; I will go! My lord, do you believe in God?"
This abrupt and ingenuous question made the Piccinino turn pale and smile at the same time.
"Why do you ask me that?" he said, pulling his hood over his face.
"Ah! you know why?" said she. "God hears and sees everything. He punishes falsehood and assists innocence!"
Again they heard Pier-Angelo's voice, calling his daughter.
"Go," said the Piccinino, supporting her with his hands, to assist her to mount the staircase quickly; "remember, if a single word escapes you, we are lost."
"You too?"
"I too!"
"That would be a pity," thought Mila, turning at the top of the staircase to cast a last glance at the comely stranger, of whom it was impossible not to make a hero and a friend of the first order, and whom, in her joyous imagination, she placed beside Agatha. He had such a soft voice and such a sweet smile! His tone was so noble, his authoritative air so convincing! "I will be brave and discreet," she said. "I am only a little girl, and yet I am the one who is to save everybody's life!" In all times, alas! the sparrow has yielded to the fascination of the vulture.
In all this the Piccinino gave way to an inborn passion for increasing the difficulties of an adventure to his profit, or simply for amusement. To be sure, he had no better way of enticing Abbé Ninfo to his house than by offering a bait to his lust. But he might well have chosen some other woman than the innocent Mila to play, with the aid of some slight resemblance or of a similar costume, the part of the person who was to appear in his garden. The abbé was sometimes insultingly suspicious, because he was a horrible coward; but, blinded by ridiculous presumption, and impelled by lecherous impatience, he would have fallen into the trap. A little violence, a man stationed behind the gate, would have sufficed to place him in the bandit's hands. There were many other ruses to which the Piccinino was accustomed to resort, and which might have succeeded as well; for the abbé, with all his scheming, his inquisitiveness, his incessant espionage, his impudent falsehoods and his shameless persistence, was a villain of the lowest order, and the stupidest and least adroit man on earth. People are too much afraid of knaves as a general rule; they do not know that the majority of them are fools. Abbé Ninfo would not have had to take half the trouble to do twice the harm, if he had had ever so little intelligence and real penetration.