“Stolen? For what does your mightiness take me?”
“For a traitor, my good fellow—nay, no occasion to snatch at your knife in that threatening fashion; it is dangerous, for I am a hasty man, and apt to use these without much reflection,” and I heard the click of a pistol-lock. “I am sorry if I have wounded your delicate sense of honour, but when a man sells his own countrymen for gold, one is a little—just a trifle, you know—apt to be suspicious of him.”
“A man must live,” responded the churlish voice. “I have a wife and children to feed and clothe, and no man would employ me. If I have turned traitor, it is because I have been driven to it.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” remarked the other speaker in a somewhat sarcastic tone of voice. “The good Corsicans, your fellow-countrymen, have perhaps been weak enough to allow your slightly singular cast of countenance to prejudice them against you, eh? Well, I really cannot blame them; you must yourself admit that it is the reverse of prepossessing.”
“I am as God made me,” growled the traitorous Corsican.
“Say rather, as the devil and your own evil passions made you,” retorted the Frenchman. “Do not libel your Creator by attributing to Him any share in the work of moulding a visage whereon the words ‘treachery, avarice, theft, and murder’ are printed in large capitals. You may possibly have been born simply ugly, but your present hang-dog cast of countenance is entirely your own handiwork, my good friend Guiseppe. Now pray do not fumble at your knife again, that is an excessively bad habit which you have contracted; take my advice and break it off. If you do not, it will assuredly get you into serious trouble some day.”
The individual thus addressed muttered some inaudible reply, which sounded, however, very much like an imprecation, to which his tormentor responded with a gay laugh. Then I heard the door creak upon its solitary hinge and scrape along the ground, as it was dragged open, and the voice of the Frenchman said, addressing some one outside,—
“Well, Pierre, how are things in general looking by this time?”
“Much better, mon sergent” replied another voice. “The rain has ceased, the clouds are dispersing, and yonder appears the first gleam of daybreak.”
“That is well,” remarked the sergeant. “We will wait another half-hour, by which time it will be light enough to see where we are going, and then we must march once more.”