"Is that you, Ors' Anton'?" exclaimed the child, rather startled. "It is Signorina Colomba's song."
"I forbid you to sing it!" said Orso, in a threatening voice.
The child kept turning her head this way and that, as though looking about for a way of escape, and she would certainly have run off had she not been held back by the necessity of taking care of a large bundle which lay on the grass, at her feet.
Orso felt ashamed of his own vehemence. "What are you carrying there, little one?" said he, with all the gentleness he could muster. And as Chilina hesitated, he lifted up the linen that was wrapped round the bundle, and saw it contained a loaf of bread and other food.
"To whom are you bringing the loaf, my dear?" he asked again.
"You know quite well, Ors' Anton': to my uncle."
"And isn't your uncle a bandit?"
"At your service, Ors' Anton'."
"If you met the gendarmes, they would ask you where you were going . . ."
"I should tell them," the child replied, at once, "that I was taking food to the men from Lucca who were cutting down the /maquis/."
"And if you came across some hungry hunter who insisted on dining at your expense, and took your provisions away from you?"
"Nobody would dare! I would say they are for my uncle!"
"Well! he's not the sort of man to let himself be cheated of his dinner! . . . Is your uncle very fond of you?"
"Oh, yes, Ors' Anton'. Ever since my father died, he has taken care of my whole family--my mother and my little sister, and me. Before mother was ill, he used to recommend her to rich people, who gave her employment. The mayor gives me a frock every year, and the priest has taught me my catechi**, and how to read, ever since my uncle spoke to them about us. But your sister is kindest of all to us!"
Just at this moment a dog ran out on the pathway. The little girl put two of her fingers into her mouth and gave a shrill whistle, the dog came to her at once, fawned upon her, and then plunged swiftly into the thicket. Soon two men, ill-dressed, but very well armed, rose up out of a clump of young wood a few paces from where Orso stood. It was as though they had crawled up like snakes through the tangle of cytisus and myrtle that covered the ground.
"Oh, Ors' Anton', you're welcome!" said the elder of the two men.
"Why, don't you remember me?"
"No!" said Orso, looking hard at him.
"Queer how a beard and a peaked cap alter a man! Come, monsieur, look at me well! Have you forgotten your old Waterloo men? Don't you remember Brando Savelli, who bit open more than one cartridge alongside of you on that unlucky day?"
"What! Is it you?" said Orso. "And you deserted in 1816!"
"Even so, sir. Faith! soldiering grows tiresome, and besides, I had a job to settle over in this country. Aha, Chili! You're a good girl!
Give us our dinner at once, we're hungry. You've no notion what an appetite one gets in the /maquis/. Who sent us this--was it Signorina Colomba or the mayor?"
"No, uncle, it was the miller's wife. She gave me this for you, and a blanket for my mother."
"What does she want of me?"
"She says the Lucchesi she hired to clear the /maquis/ are asking her five-and-thirty sous, and chestnuts as well--because of the fever in the lower parts of Pietranera."
"The lazy scamps! . . . I'll see to them! . . . Will you share our dinner, monsieur, without any ceremony? We've eaten worse meals together, in the days of that poor compatriot of ours, whom they have discharged from the army."
"No, I thank you heartily. They have discharged me, too!"
"Yes, so I heard. But I'll wager you weren't sorry for it. You have your own account to settle too. . . . Come along, cure," said the bandit to his comrade. "Let's dine! Signor Orso, let me introduce the cure. I'm not quite sure he is a cure. But he knows as much as any priest, at all events!"
"A poor student of theology, monsieur," quoth the second bandit, "who has been prevented from following his vocation. Who knows, Brandolaccio, I might have been Pope!"
"What was it that deprived the Church of your learning?" inquired Orso.
"A mere nothing--a bill that had to be settled, as my friend Brandolaccio puts it. One of my sisters had been ****** a fool of herself, while I was devouring book-lore at Pisa University. I had to come home, to get her married. But her future husband was in too great a hurry; he died of fever three days before I arrived. Then I called, as you would have done in my place, on the dead man's brother. I was told he was married. What was I to do?"
"It really was puzzling! What did you do?"
"It was one of those cases in which one has to resort to the gunflint."
"In other words?"
"I put a bullet in his head," said the bandit coolly.
Orso made a horrified gesture. Nevertheless, curiosity, and, it may be, his desire to put off the moment when he must return home, induced him to remain where he was, and continue his conversation with the two men, each of whom had at least one murder on his conscience.
While his comrade was talking, Brandolaccio was laying bread and meat in front of him. He helped himself--then he gave some food to this dog, whom he introduced to Orso under the name of Brusco, as an animal possessing a wonderful instinct for recognising a soldier, whatever might be the disguise he had assumed. Lastly, he cut off a hunch of bread and a slice of raw ham, and gave them to his niece. "Oh, the merry life a bandit lives!" cried the student of theology, after he had swallowed a few mouthfuls. "You'll try it some day, perhaps, Signor della Rebbia, and you'll find out how delightful it is to acknowledge no master save one's own fancy!"
Hitherto the bandit had talked Italian. He now proceeded in French.
"Corsica is not a very amusing country for a young man to live in--but for a bandit, there's the difference! The women are all wild about us.
I, as you see me now, have three mistresses in three different villages. I am at home in every one of them, and one of the ladies is married to a gendarme!"
"You know many languages, monsieur!" said Orso gravely.
