* * * * *
Matteo lay on his couch in the Hôpital de Grâce nursing his arm. The wound had healed and they were treating the bone by friction now—reducing and suppling it, but causing Matteo a good deal of incidental pain, which the hospital doctors in their careless way took very much as a matter of course. If Matteo had had the long Arquà knife which had been taken away from him, the two internes might have been surprised by a sudden revelation of the sentiments of the patient under treatment.
Matteo had privileges, however. The house surgeons only tortured him once a day, and generally about four Chanot came to bring him a screw of tobacco, a little brandy, and the news of the town, adroitly seasoned to suit Matteo's taste in publicity.
"Ah, my good Matteo," he would say, as he came in with that nonchalant ease in his gait and that devilish glitter in his eye which made Matteo at once envy and adore him. "Matteo of the left hand, how goes the other to-day? Have you had dreams of the beautiful lady you saw—or imagined you saw—at the house on the hill?"
"It was no dream, Master," said the Gaucher, "I saw her. She had brown hair, a wilderness of it, and her lips were redder than the grenadine flower."
"The house was a rich one?"
"Wonderfully rich. I did not see much of it myself, being only on the ground floor with the servants, but I have four comrades who saw the bags of golden coins heaped up like corn sacks against the wall, and the master is an old man, very wise and learned, who speaks my speech only with a southern accent. He dips his hands into the gold and draws out the Napoleons, jingling and glittering. They run over his palms, set close together like a cup, and slip through his fingers upon the floor, where they lie, for it is not worth while among so much to pick them up. The sweeper has them for his pains in stooping. It is true Master, as God is in heaven. My comrades saw all this and swore on the bones of the blessed Saint Catherine of Siena, whose servant I am, that they spoke no lie."
Then would Chanot rise and go his way meditating. There might be some truth at the bottom of this fairy tale. It was worth while thinking over. But there were points to study. Should he take the whole gang into his confidence or only a few? That would depend on the number and courage of the servants—their dispositions to fight for their master—and then the girl—that also was a point to be weighed most carefully. Yet Chanot could by no means put off too long, for the hill of St. André was not far away, and the wind of the rich trover might be wafted down on any breeze.
Chanot had no need of temptations to plot or to do evil. These came natural to him. He was better acquainted with the evil he had done than with that which he was going to do. His future was not, if one might say so, on the knees of his gods, but on those of his devils. Anton Chanot had been bred good, but up till now he had never thought, desired, or done aught but evil. Evil, indeed, was his good, and if on occasion he showed himself a little kind, as in the bringing of Matteo's tobacco, it was only that he might obtain the secrets of some man's heart.
But Matteo was an Italian, and an Italian of Arquà. He was full of ruse and as little trustful as a Norman peasant. He saw through Chanot's little luxuries. He weighed the news gossip as in a balance, and even the tobacco he smelt curiously, and found of second quality. One person he meant at all hazards to benefit, and that person was Matteo le Gaucher.