“Ah! that is just the question!” sarcastically rejoined Guardiola. “It is for me to discover it. If you’ll be frank, and declare yourself, you may perhaps get better treatment; besides, it may shorten the term of your imprisonment.”
“My imprisonment! By what right, sir, do you talk to me of imprisonment? I am an Englishman; and you, I take it, are an officer in the Pope’s army—not a captain of banditti. Make me a prisoner, and it shall cost you dear.”
“Cost what it may, signore, you are my prisoner; and shall remain so till I can ascertain in what character you have been travelling through these parts. Your story is suspicious. You have passed yourself off for an artist.”
“I have not passed myself off for one, though I am so—in an humble sense. What has that to do with the affair?”
“Much. Why should you, ‘un povero pittore’”—this was said sneeringly—“be straying out here in the mountains? If you are an English artist, as you say, you must have come to Italy to paint ruins and sculptures, not rocks and trees. What then is your errand up here? Answer me that, signore!”
The young artist hesitated. Should he make a clean breast of it, and declare his errand? Had the time come? Why should he not? He was in a dilemma, out of which he might escape more easily than he had done from the brigands’ den. Why should he prolong the continuance of his second captivity?—for it was clear that the officer intended continuing it. A word would release him—so, at least, he presumed. There seemed no reason why it should not be spoken. After a moment’s reflection, he determined on speaking it.
“Signor Captain,” said he, “if in the execution of your duty you must necessarily know why I am here, you shall be welcome to the information. Perhaps my answer may give surprise to the Signor Francesco Torreani, and also to the Signorina Lucetta!”
“What! Signor Inglese!” exclaimed the sindico’s daughter, “you know our names then?”
“I do, signorina.”
“From whom have you heard them?” inquired the father.