“Nay now, nay now,” he soothed me. “And, after all, it happens that I do not want a mule. I have one mule already, and I am a poor man, and...”
“A fig for your whines,” said I. “Here is the case. I have no money—not a grosso. So the mule must pay for my dinner. Name your price, and let us have done.”
“Ha!” he fumed at me. “I am to buy your stolen beast, am I? I am to be frightened by your violence into buying it? Be off, you rogue, or I'll raise the village and make short work of you. Be off, I say!”
He backed away as he spoke, towards the fireplace, and from the corner took a stout oaken staff. He was a villain, a thieving rogue. That much was plain. And it was no less plain that I must submit, and leave my beast to him, or else perhaps suffer a worse alternative.
Had those four honest peasants still been there, he would not have dared to have so borne himself. But as it was, without witnesses to say how the thing had truly happened, if he raised the village against me how should they believe a man who confessed that he had eaten a dinner for which he could not pay? It must go very ill with me.
If I tried conclusions with him, I could break him in two notwithstanding his staff. But there would remain the girl to give the alarm, and when to dishonesty I should have added violence, my case would be that of any common bandit.
“Very well,” I said. “You are a dirty, thieving rascal, and a vile one to take advantage of one in my position. I shall return for the mule another day. Meanwhile consider it in pledge for what I owe you. But see that you are ready for the reckoning when I present it.”
With that, I swung on my heel, strode past the big-eyed girl, out of that foul kennel into God's sweet air, followed by the ordures of speech which that knave flung after me.
I turned up the street, setting my face towards the mountains, and trudged amain.
Soon I was out of the village and ascending the steep road towards the Pass of Cisa that leads over the Apennines to Pontremoli. This way had Hannibal come when he penetrated into Etruria some two thousand years ago. I quitted the road and took to bridle-paths under the shoulder of the mighty Mount Prinzera. Thus I pushed on and upward through grey-green of olive and deep enamelled green of fig-trees, and came at last into a narrow gorge between two great mountains, a place of ferns and moisture where all was shadow and the air felt chill.