After an endless story, eagerly listened to, however, by our hero, who could make nothing of it, we must admit, but who had a deep feeling of regard for the good-natured cantinière, she added, “And to think that it should be Frenchmen who have robbed, and beaten, and ruined me!”
“What! it wasn’t the enemy?” cried Fabrizio, with an artlessness which made his handsome face, so grave and pale, look more charming than ever.
“What a silly you are, my poor child!” returned the woman, smiling through her tears; “and silly as you are, you are a very good fellow.”
“And however silly he may be, he pulled his Prussian down well yesterday,” added Corporal Aubry, who had happened to find his way through the crowd to the other side of the horse on which the good woman was riding. “But he’s proud,” said the corporal. Fabrizio started a little. “And what’s your name?” continued he. “For, after all, if any report is sent in, I should like to give it.”
“My name is Vasi,” answered Fabrizio, with rather an odd look. “I mean,” correcting himself hastily, “Boulot.”
Boulot had been the name of the owner of the route papers the jailer’s wife had given him. Two nights before, as he marched along, he had studied them carefully, for he was beginning to reflect a little, and was not so astonished by everything that happened to him as he had been at first. In addition to poor Boulot’s papers he had also carefully kept the Italian passport according to which he claimed the noble name of Vasi, dealer in barometers. When the corporal had taxed him with being proud it had been on the tip of his tongue to reply, “Proud! I, Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, who is willing to bear the name of a dealer in barometers called Vasi?”
While he was considering all this and saying to himself, “I must really remember that my name is Boulot, or I shall find myself in the prison with which Fate threatens me,” the corporal and the cantinière had been exchanging ideas about him.
“Don’t take what I say for mere curiosity,” said the cantinière, and she dropped the second person singular, which, in her homely fashion, she had hitherto been using. “I’m going to ask you these questions for your own good. Who are you, really and truly?”
Fabrizio was silent for a moment; he was considering that he might never come across better friends from whom to ask advice, and advice he sorely needed. “We are going into a fortified town; the governor will want to know who I am, and if my answers show that I know nothing about the hussar regiment, the uniform of which I wear, I shall be thrown into prison at once.” Being an Austrian subject, Fabrizio realized all the importance of his passport. The members of his own family, highly born and religious as they were, had suffered frequent annoyance in this particular. The good woman’s questions were not, therefore, the least displeasing to him, but when he paused before replying to choose out his clearest French expressions, the cantinière, pricked with eager curiosity, added by way of encouragement, “We’ll give you good advice about your behaviour, Corporal Aubry and I.”
“I’m sure of that,” answered Fabrizio. “My name is Vasi, and I belong to Genoa; my sister, who was a famous beauty, married a captain. As I am only seventeen, she sent for me that I might see France and improve myself. I did not find her in Paris, and knowing she was with this army I followed it, and have hunted in every direction without being able to find her. The soldiers, struck by my foreign accent, had me arrested. I had money at that time; I gave some to the gendarme in charge of me. He gave me papers and a uniform, and said, ‘Be off with you, and swear you’ll never mention my name to a living soul.’”