“All right!” replied Puffo, shrugging his shoulders; “you have been a long time coming to the point. You are a dreadful chatterbox.”
Puffo went off with the lantern in a state of considerable discontent with his patron, who had, in fact, good reasons for suspecting his honesty, having several times discovered among his professional apparatus sundry objects whose sudden acquisition Puffo had been unable to explain in a satisfactory manner.
It was not without reason, upon the other hand, that Puffo accused Cristiano of being a chatterbox. He was, at all events, a great talker, as all men endowed with strong intellectual and physical vitality are apt to be. Puffo, with his mere rude glibness of speech and his vulgar instincts, felt the ascendency of a mind and character infinitely superior to his own. He, however, was the stronger of the two, and when the tall and slender Cristiano threatened this thick-set and muscular Livornese, it was his moral influence or his agility that he relied upon, rather than physical strength, to enforce his authority.
When Cristiano was left alone, he abandoned himself to his innocent affection for his ass. He had relieved him from his baggage as soon as they entered the bear-room. This baggage, consisting of two large boxes, a bundle of light poles of white wood with their cross-pieces taken apart, and finally a package of curtains and tapestries which were still quite fresh, carefully rolled in a leather case, he arranged in a corner. All this was his artistic apparatus,—the tools of his trade, his livelihood. As for his wardrobe, it gave him no sort of trouble. It consisted merely of a little bundle of linen tied up in a handkerchief, and a cloak of coarse cloth, which made a good covering for Jean when it left the back of its owner. The rest of his effects he wore—to wit, a Venetian cape a good deal defaced, small-clothes of some stout material, and three pair of woollen stockings, one over the other.
His cape, his woollen cap, and his broad-brimmed hat, Cristiano had taken off, so as to be more at his ease in setting things to rights. He was a tall, slender fellow, with a remarkably handsome face, shaded by a profusion of black hair in great disorder.
The warmth of the stove began to make itself felt, and besides, the young man was too vigorous to be sensitive to the cold. He went about the room, therefore, in his shirt-sleeves, and made arrangements to pass the night as comfortably as possible. It was not the absence of the beds they had been told about that troubled him, but the fear that he would not be able to find Jean anything to eat and drink.
“I was very foolish,” he said to himself, “not to think about that as I passed the new chateau and the farm; but how can one think of anything with the wind blowing ice-needles into his eyes? They told us at the farm (and I remember now that they said so in a very sarcastic way) that we would find an abundance of everything at the old chateau, if old Stenson would be good enough to let us in; now as we were obliged to break the door open, it seems that he was not good enough. Well, whether or no, I must find out how the Cerberus of this old ruin will take our being here. After all, I have my contract in my pocket, and, if they try to turn me out here too, I will show my teeth.”
Thereupon Cristiano placed Jean, together with his baggage, in the recess under the staircase, and as he was seeking, candle in hand, for a nail or peg to which to tie the ass, he saw that there was a door in the wainscot just at the farthest part of this recess, and in the defective angle of the room.
As he had not noticed the irregularity in the plan of the room, he could not tell whether the passage-way into which the door opened was in a thick wall, or between two walls joined above. He pushed the secret door—for it was one—without expecting that it would open, and, seeing that it was not fastened in any way, he cautiously went forward to see what he could find. He had not gone three steps when the candle went out. Luckily the fire was burning, and he was able to light it again, while listening with a certain pleasure to the sharp and melancholy whistling of the wind in the secret passage.
Cristiano had a romantic disposition, and was in the habit of indulging in poetic fancies. It seemed to him that the spirits so long imprisoned in this abandoned hall were complaining at being disturbed in their mysteries; and as he was afraid, moreover, that the cold would increase poor Jean’s cough, he took pains, when he went out again, to shut the door after him; he had noticed, beforehand, that there were strong bolts on the outside, but that its own weight was sufficient to keep it in its place.