Mila docilely quickened her pace, and when the brigand had led her across his garden, after securely locking the gate, she allowed him to escort her into his house, whose neatness and coolness delighted her.
"Is this your own house, pray, my lord?" she asked him.
"No," he replied, "we are in Carmelo Tomabene's house, as I told you; but he is my debtor and my friend, and I have a room under his roof to which I sometimes retire when I need rest and solitude."
He led her through the house, which was arranged and furnished in rustic fashion, but with an orderly, substantial, homelike appearance which the dwellings of rich peasants seldom display. At the end of the ventilating corridor, which ran from end to end of the upper floor, he opened a double door, the inner one being bound with iron, and ushered Mila into the truncated tower which he had incorporated into his house, so to speak, and where he had fitted up a dainty and mysterious boudoir.
No princess ever possessed one more sumptuous, more sweetly perfumed or adorned with rarer objects. But no artisan had ever put his hand to it. The Piccinino himself had concealed the walls beneath hangings of Oriental silk stitched with gold and silver. The divan of yellow satin was covered with the skin of a huge royal tiger, whose head startled the girl at first; but she soon grew bold enough to touch its scarlet-velvet tongue, its eyes of enamel, and to sit upon its black-striped side. Then she gazed about with dazzled eyes at the gleaming weapons, the Turkish sabres adorned with jewels, the pipes with gold tassels, the chafing-dishes, the China vases, the innumerable objects of an exquisite beauty, a magnificence or a singularity which appealed to her imagination like the descriptions of enchanted palaces with which it was filled.
"All this is even more incomprehensible and more beautiful than anything I have seen at the Palmarosa palace," she said to herself, "and surely this prince is richer and even more illustrious than the princess. He must be some claimant to the Sicilian crown, who is working secretly to bring about the downfall of the Neapolitan government."—What would this poor child have thought if she had known the source of that piratical splendor!
While she gazed at everything with the artless admiration of a child, the Piccinino, who had bolted the door and lowered the Chinese shades at the window, gazed at Mila with the utmost amazement. He had expected that he would have to tell her the most incredible fables, the most audacious lies, to induce her to follow him to his lair, and the facility of his triumph began already to disgust him with it. To be sure, Mila was the loveliest creature he had ever seen; but was her perfect tranquillity due to impudence, or stupidity? Could so seductive a creature possibly be ignorant of the effect her charms were certain to produce? Could so young a maid risk a tête-à-tête of this sort without a moment of fear or embarrassment?
The Piccinino, observing that she had a very beautiful ring on her finger, and thinking that he could follow the thread of her thoughts by following the direction of her glances, said to her, with a smile: "You love jewels, my dear Mila, and, like all girls, you think more of personal adornment than of anything else in this world. My mother left me a few trinkets of some value, which are in that lapis lazuli casket by your side. Would you like to look at them?"
"If I may without indiscretion, I would like to," Mila replied.
Carmelo took the casket, placed it on the girl's knees, and, kneeling beside her on the edge of the tiger's skin, he displayed before her eyes a mass of necklaces, rings, chains and buckles which were thrown pell-mell into the casket with a sort of superb contempt for such a multitude of priceless objects, some of which were masterpieces of old-fashioned carved work, others perfect treasures by reason of the beauty and great size of the diamonds.