“Well,” said the baker, “if you will stay here a few minutes, you will probably see the lad who sold it to me. He desired to be paid in bread, and my bread was not quite baked when he was here. I bid him call again in an hour, and I fancy he will be pretty punctual, for he looked desperately hungry.”
The baker had scarcely finished speaking when Francisco, who was standing watching at the door, exclaimed, “Here comes Piedro! I hope he is not the boy who sold you the wood, Mr. Baker?”
“He is the boy, though,” replied the baker, and Piedro, who now entered the shop, started at the sight of Carlo and Francisco, whom he had never seen since the day of disgrace in the fruit-market.
“Your servant, Signor Piedro,” said Carlo; “I have the honour to tell you that this piece of wood, and all that you took out of the basket, which you found in the yard of the arsenal, belongs to my sister.”
“Yes, indeed,” cried Rosetta.
Piedro being very certain that nobody saw him when he emptied Rosetta’s basket, and imagining that he was suspected only upon the bare assertion of a child like Rosetta, who might be baffled and frightened out of her story, boldly denied the charge, and defied any one to prove him guilty.
“He has a right to be heard in his own defence,” said Arthur, with the cool justice of an Englishman; and he stopped the angry Carlo’s arm, who was going up to the culprit with all the Italian vehemence of oratory and gesture. Arthur went on to say something in bad Italian about the excellence of an English trial by jury, which Carlo was too much enraged to hear, but to which Francisco paid attention, and turning to Piedro, he asked him if he was willing to be judged by twelve of his equals?
“With all my heart,” said Piedro, still maintaining an unmoved countenance, and they returned immediately to the little wood-market. On their way, they had passed through the fruit-market, and crowds of those who were well acquainted with Piedro’s former transactions followed, to hear the event of the present trial.
Arthur could not, especially as he spoke wretched Italian, make the eager little merchants understand the nature and advantages of an English trial by jury. They preferred their own summary mode of proceeding. Francisco, in whose integrity they all had perfect confidence, was chosen with unanimous shouts for the judge; but he declined the office, and another was appointed. He was raised upon a bench, and the guilty but insolent looking Piedro, and the ingenuous, modest Rosetta stood before him. She made her complaint in a very artless manner; and Piedro, with ingenuity, which in a better cause would have deserved admiration, spoke volubly and craftily in his own defence. But all that he could say could not alter facts. The judge compared the notched bit of wood found at the baker’s with a piece from which it was cut, which he went to see in the yard of the arsenal. It was found to fit exactly. The judge then found it impossible to restrain the loud indignation of all the spectators. The prisoner was sentenced never more to sell wood in the market; and the moment sentence was pronounced, Piedro was hissed and hooted out of the market-place. Thus a third time he deprived himself of the means of earning his bread.
We shall not dwell upon all his petty methods of cheating in the trades he next attempted. He handed lemonade about in a part of Naples where he was not known, but he lost his customers by putting too much water and too little lemon into this beverage. He then took to the waters from the sulphurous springs, and served them about to foreigners; but one day, as he was trying to jostle a competitor from the coach door, he slipped his foot, and broke his glasses. They had been borrowed from an old woman, who hired out glasses to the boys who sold lemonade. Piedro knew that it was the custom to pay, of course, for all that was broken; but this he was not inclined to do. He had a few shillings in his pocket, and thought that it would be very clever to defraud this poor woman of her right, and to spend his shillings upon what he valued much more than he did his good name—macaroni. The shillings were soon gone.