“Oh, we’ll get him through,” said the husband very civilly. “We have Carlo Giuseppe’s boat.”
Another weakness of our hero’s character, which we will confess as frankly as we have related his fright in the police office at the end of the bridge, now caused his eyes to brim with tears.
The absolute devotion he had met with among these peasants moved him deeply. He thought, too, of his aunt’s characteristic kind-heartedness. He would have liked to have been able to make all these people’s fortunes. Ludovico now came back, carrying a bundle.
“Good-bye to this other fellow,” said the husband in the most friendly fashion.
“That’s not it at all,” replied Ludovico, in a very anxious voice. “People are beginning to talk about you. It was noticed when you left the main street and turned down our vicolo that you hesitated, like a man who wanted to hide himself.”
“Get up quickly to the room above,” said the husband. This room was a very large and handsome one. The two windows were filled with gray linen instead of glass. It contained four beds, each about six feet wide and five feet high.
“And quick! and quick!” said Ludovico. “There’s a conceited fool of a gendarme lately arrived here who wanted to make love to the pretty woman below stairs, and I warned him that when next he went out patrolling on the roads he would very likely meet a bullet. If that dog hears your Excellency mentioned, he’ll want to play us a trick; he’ll try to get you arrested here, so as to bring disrepute on Theodolinda’s trattoria. What!” Ludovico went on, when he saw Fabrizio’s shirt all stained with blood and his wounds tied up with handkerchiefs; “so the porco defended himself! This is enough to get us arrested a hundred times over. I didn’t buy a shirt.” Unceremoniously he opened the husband’s cupboard, and handed over one of his shirts to Fabrizio, who was soon dressed as a rich middle-class countryman. Ludovico unhooked a net which was hanging on the wall, put Fabrizio’s clothes into the basket for holding the fish, ran down the stairs, and went swiftly out by a back door, Fabrizio following him.
“Theodolinda,” he called out, as he hurried past the shop, “hide what we’ve left upstairs. We’ll go and wait in the willows, and you, Pietro Antonio, make haste and send us a boat. It will be well paid for.”
Ludovico led Fabrizio over more than twenty ditches; the widest of these were bridged by very long and very elastic wooden boards. Ludovico pulled these planks over as fast as they crossed them. When they reached the last cutting he pulled the plank away eagerly. “Now we can breathe,” he said. “That dog of a policeman will have to go more than two leagues round before he can reach your Excellency. But you’ve turned white!” said he to Fabrizio. “I’ve not forgotten to bring a little bottle of brandy.”
“I shall be very glad of it; the wound in my thigh is beginning to hurt, and besides, I was in a horrible fright while I was in the police office at the end of the bridge.”