The Piccinino, Volume 2 (of 2); The last of Aldinis

by George Sand

"All right! all right!" said the monk; "but stop talking, my sons. This is a thickly settled spot, and we mustn't talk as we pass the houses. Besides, we can't walk so fast when we are quarrelling. Ah! Magnani, you are a man!"

Magnani marched to meet danger with cold and melancholy courage. He did not feel perfectly happy in love; a craving for violent emotions drove him forward at random toward some extreme goal which appeared to him vaguely as an entire transformation of his present existence and a definitive rupture with the hesitations and languor of his heart.

Michel was determined rather than calm. He knew that he was being led by a fanatic to the succor of a man who was probably no less dangerous than useful to the good cause. He knew that he himself was staking a happier and broader existence than that of his companions; but he did not hesitate to play a manly part under the circumstances. The Piccinino was his brother, and although the sympathy he felt for him was blended with suspicion and sadness, he understood his duty. Perhaps too he had become enough of a prince to be unable to endure the thought that his father's son might die at the end of a rope, with a sentence of degradation nailed to his gallows. Still, his heart was sore when he thought of his mother's grief if he should fall in such a reckless undertaking; but he resolutely closed his heart to all human weakness, and walked like the wind, as if he had hoped to wipe out, by forgetting it, the distance that he made haste to put between Agatha and himself.

The convent was not under suspicion or surveillance, as the Piccinino was not there, and the police of the Val were well aware that he had crossed the Garreta and gone into hiding in the interior of the island. Fra Angelo had invented danger near at hand to prevent the princess from suspecting the existence of distant but more real dangers. He led his young companions into his cell and assisted them to disguise themselves as monks. They divided the money, the sinews of war, as Fra Angelo said, in order that no one of them might be impeded by the weight of all the coin. They concealed beneath their frocks weapons, powder and ball. Their disguise and their outfitting consumed some time; and Fra Angelo, whose former experience of dangerous undertakings had taught him the evils of precipitation, examined everything with great care and perfect self-possession. In truth their freedom of action depended entirely upon their external aspect. The Capuchin trimmed Magnani's beard, colored Michel's eyebrows and hands, changed the tint of their cheeks and their lips by processes learned in his former profession, and with pigments so prepared as to withstand the action of rain, perspiration, and the compulsory baths to which the police resort in vain attempts to identify their prisoners.

So far as he himself was concerned, the Capuchin took no pains to deceive the eye as to his identity. It mattered little to him whether he was captured and hanged, provided that he had first saved his former captain's son. And since, in order to succeed in their undertaking, it was necessary to travel in the guise of peaceably disposed persons, nothing could be better suited to the rôle he had assigned to himself than his genuine features and costume.

When the two young men were all equipped, they gazed at each other in amazement. They were hardly recognizable, and they realized how the Piccinino, who was much more expert than Fra Angelo in the art of disguise, had been able thus far to conceal his real identity throughout his adventurous life.

And when they found themselves astride two tall mules, gaunt but willing, of wretched aspect, but of unlimited strength and endurance, they admired the monk's genius and complimented him upon it.

"I have not done all these things so rapidly without assistance," he replied, modestly; "I have been energetically and skilfully seconded, for we are not alone in our expedition. We shall meet pilgrims of divers sorts on the road we are about to take. Salute most courteously, my sons, all those persons who salute you; but be careful not to speak a word to anybody until you have looked at me. If any unforeseen accident should separate us, you will find other guides and other companions. The countersign is: Friends, isn't this the road to Tre-Castagne? I need not tell you that it is the road that leads in the opposite direction, and that nobody but one of your confederates would ask you such an absurd question. You will answer, however, as a matter of prudence, and in a jesting tone: All roads lead to Rome. And you will not place absolute confidence in your interlocutor until he has answered: By the grace of God the Father. Don't forget; don't fall asleep on your mules; and don't spare them. We have relays on the road; not a word except in whispers to one another."

As soon as they were fairly on the mountains, they urged their mules forward at a rapid pace, and rode several miles in a very short time. As Fra Angelo had said, they met various persons with whom they exchanged the sentences agreed upon. Then the Capuchin would ride up to them and talk with them in undertones, and they would resume their journey in company, sufficiently far apart not to seem to be travelling together, but always within sight and call.

The weather was exceedingly mild and the night superbly bright when they started up the mountain. The moon lighted up huge masses of rock and romantic precipices; but as they ascended through that wild country the cold made itself felt, and the mist veiled the splendor of the stars. Magnani was lost in his thoughts, but the young prince abandoned himself to a childlike delight in adventures, and, far from nourishing and fondling any presentiment of evil, as his friend was doing, he rode forward overflowing with confidence in his lucky star.