"And so at last he made up his mind to leave, and that at once, in the
carriage of the Prefect of Police. When I pressed his hand at parting,
'Now then, Signor Gustavo,' said I, 'this will certainly be the last
time we two ever meet on earth.' 'Who knows?' he replied. 'After all I
am half a countryman of yours, and have no other home.' Then he gave me
some directions with regard to Maddalena. She was not to leave the
villa, nor did the captain think of selling it. If he failed to return
within a certain number of years, she was to consider the house and
garden her own property, and meanwhile to appropriate their profits. To
the priest he gave in token of gratitude for the assistance rendered
him by the villagers, a considerable sum for the poor. On me he
bestowed a small picture of Lord Byron, which he had always carried
about with him. The portrait of Erminia he had rolled up in a tin
cylinder, and that and his fire-arms were all that he took away with
him. So we parted, and as I believed, never to meet again, and
Maddalena, who insisted upon going with him, and clung like a wild cat
to the carriage, had to be forcibly dragged off and locked into the
house till it had rolled far away.

"However that very night, so soon as they left off watching her, she
vanished, and for days ran up and down the streets of Rome like a
maniac, looking in vain for her master. At last she returned, and
hobbled about the villa alone, but she let everything go to waste; the
grapes might rot on the vines, and the fruit on the trees, rather than
she take the trouble of gathering them and carrying them to market. She
had always been idle, indeed, as a toad--a creature she resembled in
appearance too--and it was only when it concerned the captain that she
could work and bestir herself like three people in one.

"Of him, however, we heard nothing more; of his mortal foe Barbarossa
we heard far too much. Since that night he and his band had lingered
about our neighbourhood, and he seemed to have conceived a hatred
against his countrymen, because they had gathered to the assistance of
the foreigner. But for the company of papal gendarmes who were sent us
as a permanent support from Rome, I do believe he would have fallen
upon his own native village and taken a bloody revenge.

"Accordingly no one who had been present on the occasion, ever ventured
himself a rifle-shot from the last houses without taking his fire-arms
with him, and such as had