"Buon di," said he in cheerful Tuscan speech. "Are you come upon a like errand of accommodation, by chance? You are welcome to a corner of my dressing-room. We'll strike a bargain. If you dip my beard, I'll dip yours."
I said that would be bad commerce on my part, since I had no beard. "You, sir," I added, "have a remarkable one, which I confess I regret to see coloured."
"A fig for your regrets, little man," said the other. "Politics is the cry. If your passport described you as a middling-sized man with a black beard and a running at the nose, you'd be doing as I am. But you'll never have such a passport as that."
"My passport," I told him, "is destroyed. It described me as a young Jew with an assured manner and a pendulous nose."
This caused the Capuchin to look upon his visitor. Whether he knew me or not, then or before, he made no sign. "There's no flattery in that," he said, "but you could have done it. A manner's a manner, and there's an end; but I could swell any man's nose for him and say thank you. And what does your present passport bear?"
I said, "I have none. The Holy Office having confiscated it, ejected me from Bologna because I wore a crucifix and prayed to the Madonna."
"Ah," says he, "I've known a man hanged in that city for less. But what you say convinces me of one thing: you will be all the better for company."
"How so?" said I.
"Why," says the Capuchin, "you tell me you were talking to the Madonna."
"It is true that I was addressing her in her image."
"Very well; that's a proof positive to me that you had nobody else to address--a most unwholesome state of affairs. How does my beard strike you? Black as blackness, I fancy."
He was right. I assured him that it was now as black as Erebus and pleased him extremely. I told him, however, that I thought he would have more difficulty with the rest of his description, which gave him a middle size and a cold in the head. He was, in person, gigantic, and in health appeared to be as sound as a bell.
"I shall get through," said the friar, "on my beard, and where that goes I can follow as easily as a tomcat his head. But I have a trick of bending the knees which will serve me for some hundreds of yards--and if you suppose that I can't snivel you are very much mistaken. Listen to this." He hung his head, looked earnestly at the ground: then he sniffed. Sniffed, do I say? It was as if all the secret rills of the broad earth had been summoned from their founts. No noise more miserably watery could have proceeded from a nose. He beamed upon me. "Am I a wet blanket?" he cried. "Now, friend, shall we go?" He had packed up his tools in his begging-bag and stood ready to depart. I reminded him that I had no papers.
"That need not disturb you at all," he said. "You pass in as my convert. All you have to do is to do nothing and keep your mouth shut. If you cannot speak you cannot answer; that is good logic, I hope. We will discuss our several affairs presently in the reasonable air of Tuscany. I stifle in the Pope's dominions. You might say that there was not room enough for two such men." He blew out his shining cheeks till his eyes disappeared; he looked like a swollen tree-bole with a mossy growth dependent; then he deflated them with a bang, and shouted with laughter --a single expression of delight, sharply reverberant--and suddenly stopped. "Poh! what a rattle you'll think me," he said. "Come--and remember that you are a deaf-mute."
To get a thing granted it is no bad way to take it for granted. This is what the Capuchin did. I was young and he was old, I undecided and he perfectly clear in his intention. There was little more--even to my too charitable eyes--in his favour, certainly not his looks. He was a huge, straddling, positive kind of a fellow with an air of specious, bluff benevolence about him which gave way to examination. He had a very ugly mouth under his beard, cut up sideways by the pressure of his long tooth to emerge; his eyes were small, greedy and near together; they looked different ways. His nose was huge and glowing, broad-rooted as a tree and pitted with the smallpox. On his left brow he had a savage scar. His strength and determination were very extraordinary; I was to learn within a few weeks how strong he was, how ferocious and dangerous. His age might be guessed at near sixty for all his vivacity, for at close quarters I could see unmistakably the senile arc in either eye, and, as the reader knows, his hair and beard were very white. Debauchery may have left these marks upon him, but had not worn out his force. That, at any rate, was still enough to resolve the irresolute Francis, an incurable believer in the native goodness of mankind, to obey him in this instance. I am by nature pliant and easily led, and I have never been one for half measures. Therefore I received upon my staff the Capuchin's bundle in addition to my own, and followed my leader towards the guard-house, within sight of which, crooking his knees together under his frock, drawing in his shoulders, poking his head, the sturdy rogue reduced his apparent size and expression more materially than could be believed. His calculating eyes grew weak and watery, he snivelled at the nose, drew his breath sharply as if it hurt him--almost visibly shrank into himself. I looked at him with amazement, but the officers seemed to know him very well.
"Ho, Fra Clemente," says one, "on the round again, it appears!" The Capuchin quavered his admission, his hand shook as he proffered his passport. Yes, yes, poor Brother Clement must live, find consolation if he could. A festival at Prato called him, a great affair; but he was getting very sadly, as his friends might see, could not keep the road much longer. The Customs officers gave him back his papers with scarcely a glance to spare for them, and had no ears for his maundering, so occupied were they with me, his companion. "Whom have we here, Fra Clemente?" said one presently, and sent my heart into my throat. But the Capuchin sniggered and touched his nose with his finger; there was an air of low cunning about him very unpleasant to observe. "This, Sor Giacomo," says he with a cackle, "is a little surprise for the Grand Duke--a specimen, a rarity, a pretty thing. This is a Scythian youth, deaf and dumb from his birth, but very taking, as you can see. 'Tis the best thing I've picked up on my travels for many a year, and a fortune to me. Why, if I can present this handsome lad to his Highness, you may have me back upon you in my bishop's coach and six! And there will still be men of my religion who will have got more for doing less, let me tell you. You're never going to spoil an old friend's industry for the sake of a dumb heathen!"
"Heathen!" cries the fellow. "Is he a heathen? Do you suppose you may offer the Grand Duke a heathen? You'll have the Inquisition upon you, my man, for certain sure, and the Cardinal Archbishop for once on their side. Into the water with him before you touch Florence, or out with your knife. Make a Christian or a Jew of him."
"Ay," says his colleague, handling me as if I had been an Odalisque, "Ay, and the prince, between you and me, is near his time. His menagerie may go to the dogs for all he cares, Jews and infidels, blacks and whites and all. He sees little but the doctors and the priests in these days."
"What! Has it come to that?" says the Capuchin, peering through what seemed to be rheumy eyes. "If it have indeed, then may Heaven be his friend, for he'll need one. Tut! so I've spent my ducats for nothing, it seems." He shook his pretended convoy roughly by the shoulder. "Accursed Scythian,