The adjutant and his band were in despair; they looked solemnly out over the plain, half inclined to return the way they had come; but their chief, convinced that threats would produce no effect upon the son of Falcone, thought he would make one last effort by trying the effect of favours and presents.
"My boy," he said, "you are a wide-awake young dog, I can see. You will get on. But you play a dangerous game with me; and, if I did not want to give pain to my cousin Mateo, devil take it! I would carry you off with me."
"Bah!"
"But, when my cousin returns I shall tell him all about it, and he will give you the whip till he draws blood for having told me lies."
"How do you know that?"
"You will see. But, look here, be a good lad and I will give you something."
"You had better go and look for Gianetto in the mâquis, cousin, for if you stay any longer it will take a cleverer fellow than you to catch him."
The adjutant drew a watch out of his pocket, a silver watch worth quite ten crowns. He watched how little Fortunato's eyes sparkled as he looked at it, and he held out the watch at the end of its steel chain.
"You rogue," he said, "you would like to have such a watch as this hung round your neck, and to go and walk up and down the streets of Porto-Vecchio as proud as a peacock; people would ask you the time, and you would reply, 'Look at my watch!'"
"When I am grown up, my uncle the corporal will give me a watch."