"What are you proposing, Beppo?" said I.
"A strait-waistcoat," said he, and came at me with determination.
I was his master in a very few minutes, for I was much stronger than he reckoned for. When I had him at my discretion, I let him get up and thus addressed him:
"I have every reason to be extremely offended with you," I said, "but I believe that you have acted honestly. Let me, however, recommend you not to interfere in the private and personal affairs of gentlemen until you have fitted yourself to understand them. I am going upon a journey in a manner which appears becoming to one who is responsible for these lamentable troubles. I shall leave my property here in your charge, but will ask you to accept such of those articles as are on the floor as may be of use to you. When you see me again it will be as your indulgent master; but he who now bids you farewell is unworthy to shake your hand."
He nevertheless took my hand and kissed it devotedly immediately afterwards he had fallen upon my discarded trifles.
"Excellency! Excellency!" he cried, gasping, "what bounty! what splendour of soul!" He fingered my watch, listened to it. "It goes yet-- it is a famous watch!" He babbled like a happy child. "Mechlin stuff, every thread of it!" He smoothed out the lace ends of my cravat. So he ran through the silly things one after another--shoes which he could not wear, a sword which he could not use, a coat which must exhibit him a monkey--he grovelled before me and would have kissed my foot, but that I shrank from him in disgust. "Horrible, venal Venetian," I said, "thou hast shown me one more degraded than I." He was out of sight with his bundle of treasures before I could finish my reproof, and I busied myself with my last preparations.
I wrote two letters: the first was to Dr. Lanfranchi, the second to my father. To the doctor I said what was, I think, becoming, namely, that his wife was as spotless as the snow, and that the very blackness of my guilt did but show her whiteness more dazzling. I added an expression of my undying sorrow for having brought misfortune upon her whom I must always love, and him whom I had once respected, and assured him that I did not intend to rest until I had repaired it. This I addressed to the university.
I explained briefly to my father the reason of my temporary absence from Padua; and upon reconsideration of my plans, desiring to avoid any affectation of extravagance, added a cloak, a small bundle of clean linen, a staff and a few gold pieces to my thin equipment. At four o'clock in the afternoon I went out into the street and directed my steps towards the gate of San Zuan.
Leaving Padua, I turned and looked for the last time upon her domes and towers. "Farewell, once proud city, now brought low by my deed," I said. "Keep, if thou must, the accursed memory and name of Francis Antony Strelley, gentleman--Poisoner of Homes, Stabber-in-secret, Traitor in Love. I leave him behind me for the worst thou canst do. He that quits thee now is another than he: Francesco Ignoto, Pilgrim, in need of Grace."
Then I addressed myself stoutly to the hills; and it is a circumstance worthy of remark that the further I pushed the more certainly I recovered my spirits. I suppose there never was yet in this world a young man to whom the future did not appeal more urgently than the present, or who would not rather undertake an adventure without a shilling to his name than in his post-chaise and four. It is, I take it, of the essence of romance that the lady's castle-prison of enchantment lies beyond the forest, across the hills or over sea; and most assuredly that damsel who is to be won by means of a courier leading a spare horse is as little worth your pains as she whose price is half a guinea. I, in that commencement of my pilgrimage, then, was happy because I was doing something, and hopeful because I could not see my way!
CHAPTER VII
I AM MISCONCEIVED AT THE HOSPITAL
I am conscious that the reader may find much to condemn in my last chapter. He may think my schemes chimerical, my methods undisciplined; he may say that I am perverse. I shall only urge in defence of what I did that I deeply loved, and had deeply injured, the lovely Aurelia. She had departed from me in misunderstanding and anger; she did not believe in my devotion, she could not understand my behaviour. Was it surprising, then, if I felt that I must find her at all costs? Was it wonderful that I wished her to know of my repentance, or that I wished to repair my wrong-doings? For eight months I had enjoyed daily and hourly communion with her--and I don't pretend to say that the horrible loss of that had a good deal to do with my precipitate departure, any more than that the hope of finding her was what gave the spring to my feet and brought back the young blood to my heart. No pilgrim to Loretto or Compostella more longingly set his eyes to where he believed his hopes to lie than did I watch for the first sign of the Apennines, which barred my way to Siena. Having thus briefly defended myself against misconception, I shall say no more on that head.
After my first night under the stars--wondrous night of wakefulness and hopeful music, throughout which I lay entranced at the foot of a wooded hill and was never for a moment uncompanioned by nightingale, cicala and firefly--I began to suffer from footsoreness, a bodily affliction against which romance, that certain salve for the maladies of the soul, is no remedy, or very little. Crossing the hills, over burning roads, through thorny brakes or by slopes of harsh grass, my heels and the balls of my toes became alarmingly inflamed; and an acacia-spine, lodging in the sole of one foot, made matters no better. That second day of mine I could barely hobble twelve miles, and nothing but resolution could do that much for me. The night came and found me ill; I slept not; though I had provided myself with food, I could not touch it. Luckily, I was discovered by some shepherd boys early in the morning and directed to the town of Rovigo at some half a league's distance, where they said there was a hospital.
Seeing that my foot was now so bad that the touch of a hand upon it was torment, I think it had gone hard with me if Rovigo had stood another half-league away. I shall not readily forget the noble charity of one of those boys, who, seeing the inflammation set up by the thorn in my foot, ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and bound it round the instep--my first experience of the magnanimity of the poor, but by no means my last.
I limped into Rovigo and learned the direction of the hospital, at whose gate I was kept with a sorry crew of wretches for a mortal hour while the brother-in-charge finished his siesta.
Two friars, a soldier disguised in drink, a young Jew, and myself completed the company, which was allowed to make itself free of a flagged and whitewashed hall, absolutely devoid of furniture, and smelling at once sour and stale. I am sorry and ashamed to remember that the Jew was the only person of my four fellows in misfortune who kept up any semblance of manners or proper reserve. He differed, indeed, markedly from the others, not only in his behaviour, which was at least conformable, but in his appearance of alacrity and cheerful health. Seeing that I suffered as much from the ribaldry of my fellow-guests as from my bodily pains, he came and sat by my side, and encouraged me with the assurance that it was far better to wait for the brother-in-charge to awake in the course of nature than to disturb him out of his sleep. "Mighty little chance for me, for example," he said, "if Brother Hyacinth don't have his nap to the full. He'll be as savage as a starved wolf, understand, and will send a man to hell sooner than to admit him if he have a good foot left to take him there."
"Why, then," said I, "he will never send me for sure, for I have no feet."
"Be not so sure, dear sir," returned the Jew. "You don't know Brother Hyacinth as well as I do. There was a fellow came here on a day all spent and bleeding. He had lost a toe under a coach-wheel. If you will believe it, this dear host of ours bade him go walk on his hands, and offered him the cloister to get perfect in. Now, with me, I know it will go hard, unless those fools cease their din." The two friars had been dicing with the soldier, and had won his boots. Each had taken one from him, and were now wrangling who should have both. I was struck by the sinister expression of one of them, a Capuchin of great strength, with a long white beard. More than enough of him in due course. I told the Jew that my case was so bad I cared not greatly whether I was received or no. A man, I said, could die anywhere. "Why, yes," he said, "so he can-- and live anywhere also. One is as easy as the other, if you but give your mind to it. But one thing I will tell