“I don’t know what!” said M. Goefle, laughing. “Your statements are a little vague. I should be a good deal troubled with such evidence, to gain your cause.”
“My cause?”
“Yes; I am supposing that you are going to law to recover your name, your rights, your inheritance.”
“Oh, make yourself easy about that, Monsieur Goefle,” replied Cristiano; “you will never have a cause to plead for me. I have none of the ordinary foolishness of adventurers of mysterious birth, who assume, at the very least, to be the sons of kings, and who spend their whole lives in hunting all over the world for their illustrious relatives, without remembering that they, most probably, would find it more inconvenient than agreeable to be recognized. For my part, if I happen to be of a noble family I don’t know it, and I don’t trouble myself about it. My adopted parents entertained this same indifference, or rather they inspired me with it.”
“And who were your adopted parents?”
“I have never known, and I have no recollection who the persons were who received me from the window into the boat, who kept me at nurse, and who carried me into Italy. They may all have been of the same family—perhaps it was one and the same person—I can’t tell anything at all about it. My only real adopted parents were Signor Goffredi, an antiquary and professor of ancient history at Perugia, and his excellent wife, Sophia Goffredi, whom I loved like a mother.”
“But where and from whom did these good people receive you? They must have told you—”
“They never knew. They had a small fortune, and having no children, they had several times shown a desire to adopt some poor orphan. One evening, in carnival time, a man in a mask presented himself to them, and took from under his cloak the individual who now has the honor to address you, but who has not the least recollection in the world of the occurrence, and could give no explanation of it at the time; inasmuch as he then spoke a language that nobody could understand.”
“But,” interrupted the advocate, who was listening to this story with the same attention that he would have bestowed upon the progress of a cause in court, “what was the tenor of the words used by the masked person who presented you to Professor Goffredi and his wife?”
“Here they are, as they were repeated to me: ‘I come from a distance—a great distance. I am poor, and have been obliged to spend part of the money given me with this child, in travelling. I thought myself bound to do this, for I had been ordered to carry him far away, very far, from his and my own country. Here is the rest of the money. I have heard that you were looking for a child to adopt, and I know you will bring him up happy and well-educated. Will you receive this poor orphan?’”