As soon as we were alone on the road I told him I was done with him.
"I am going my own way," I said. "If I stay with you, I will end in the galleys as your accomplice."
He stopped short and glared at me.
"So the beggar grows proud," he sneered.
"You ignorant scoundrel," I answered.
Words rose, grew sharper, then snapped.
I gave him a ringing slap that turned his head.
He answered with a blow of his stick that caught me on the shoulder, but I seized the cudgel, wrenched it from his hands, and left him in the road, shouting after me in the name of Saint Francis.
I walked off towards Macerata with his stick and my anger for company.
A carrier who was driving to Tolentino let me climb onto his cart for two paoli.
From there I could have reached Foligno in a wagon for six more, but unfortunately a wish for economy made me refuse the offer.
I felt well, and I thought I could easily walk as far as Valcimare.
Five hours later I crawled into Valcimare half dead.
My legs shook, my back burned, and my feet felt like two pieces of cooked meat in my shoes.
I was strong and healthy, but a walk of five hours was more than I could bear, because in my infancy I had never gone a league on foot.
Young people cannot practice too much the art of walking.
A good bed, a rough supper, and sleep came to my rescue.
In the morning I felt almost fresh, ready to take the road again.
I called for the innkeeper, put my hand into my pocket for my purse and froze.
The table at Tolentino rose before my mind.
I saw my purse on it, exactly where I had placed it the evening before.
Seven sequins, all my fortune, quietly waiting for a fool to forget them.
The thunderbolt struck. I went cold from head to foot.
For a moment I saw myself limping back to Tolentino, begging the innkeeper to search every corner.
Then common sense spoke.
Even if I returned, I would find nothing, and meanwhile I would throw away time and strength I could not afford to waste.
All that remained to me was a few copper coins.
I paid my small bill and set off again, heart hollow, towards Seraval.
Misfortune, which had begun by emptying my purse, decided to try my body next.
Three miles before Seraval I tried to clear a narrow ditch in the road with a jump. My foot slipped on the far edge.
A sharp pain shot through my ankle, and I fell.
When I tried to stand, my ankle refused all service. I dragged myself to the side of the road and sat down in the grass, leg stretched out, watching the empty path.
There was nothing left to do but wait for some passerby to pick me up.
An hour later a peasant came along with a little grey donkey. He looked at my swollen ankle, shrugged, and said he would take me to Seraval for one paolo.
He set me down at the edge of the village and, to save me the expense of an inn, handed me over to an ill-favoured fellow with a face like sour wine.
For two paoli paid in advance this worthy host promised me a bed.
I asked him to send for a surgeon. He scratched his head, spat on the floor and replied that the man would come early in the morning.
That meant no surgeon.
I had a wretched supper, after which I lay down in a filthy bed. I was in hope that sleep would bring me some relief, but my evil genius was preparing for me a night of torments.
Not long after I had stretched out, the door banged open and three men walked in with guns on their shoulders, beards like thickets, and looking like banditti.
They spoke a kind of slang which I could not make out. They drank, pounded their mugs on the table, sang snatches of obscene songs, and behaved as if I were a bundle of rags in the corner.
Around midnight they threw themselves on heaps of straw spread on the floor.
The house grew quieter, but my relief was short.
My host, drunk and swaying, lurched toward the bed.
Without ceremony he began to pull back the blanket.
"What are you doing" I cried. "This bed is mine."
He answered with a stream of blasphemies, and informed me that all the devils in hell could not keep him from lying in his own bed.
His breath smelt of raw wine and garlic.
My ankle made resistance impossible.
I edged over, sick with disgust, and forced to make room for him.
"Heavens, where am I?" I exclaimed.
"In the house of the most honest constable in all the papal states," he muttered proudly, already half asleep.
Could I possibly have supposed that the peasant would have brought me amongst those accursed enemies of humankind!
He threw himself down beside me with a grunt, and within a moment his hand began to search with a brutal familiarity that left no doubt as to his purpose.
Pain or no pain, I struck.
My fist met his chest with all the strength I had left. He gave a hoarse cry and tumbled out of the bed.
He staggered up, swearing, rubbing his breast, then lurched toward me again with the same animal insistence.
I saw at once what the contest would cost me.
My ankle throbbed like a pulse of fire.
If I grappled with him and fell, I would be helpless under his weight.
I slid out of the bed and stood on one foot, trembling with rage and disgust.
He watched me with muddy eyes but did not hinder me.
Clinging to the wall, I crawled across the room, found a chair, and lowered myself into it.
There I spent the rest of the night, upright, aching, sickened by the stink of wine and unwashed flesh.
At daybreak his "honest comrades" called him. He rolled up with them at once.
Soon the room filled again with shouting and drinking.
The three strangers took their guns, slung them over their shoulders, and went out laughing.
Left alone by the departure of the vile rabble, I passed another unpleasant hour, calling in vain for someone.
At last a boy appeared. I pressed a coin into his palm and ordered him to fetch a surgeon.
The doctor examined my foot, and assured me that three or four days would set me to rights. He advised me to be removed to an inn, and I most willingly followed his counsel.
They carried me out, and the instant I was laid in a clean bed I felt my whole body loosen. The innkeeper's wife brought broth; she changed the cloth round my ankle; she spoke to me like a human being.
And all that kindness brought its own dread.
Lying there, safe at last, I began to count what I possessed.
I had no purse. No credit. No protector.
When my ankle healed, what then?
I feared that I should be compelled to sell my coat to pay the inn-keeper, and the very thought made me feel ashamed.
I began to consider that if I had controlled my sympathy for the young girl so ill-treated by Stephano, I should not have fallen into this sad predicament, and I felt conscious that my sympathy had been a mistake.
If I had put up with the faults of the friar, if this and if that, and every other if was conjured up to torment my restless and wretched brain.
Yet I must confess that the thoughts which have their origin in misfortune are not without advantage to a young man, for they give him the habit of thinking, and the man who does not think never does anything right.
On the morning of the fourth day I put my foot to the ground and found that it bore my weight.
The surgeon had been right.
I could walk.
That discovery brought me no joy.
Rain tapped steadily at the window.
My great-coat hung on the chair, darkened at the hem, suddenly precious.
I counted again what I owed. Fifteen paoli to the innkeeper. Four to the surgeon.
I had nothing.
I turned the coat over in my hands, feeling its weight, already imagining the chill of the road without it.
Just as I was going to proffer my painful request to the worthy doctor, the door flew open.
Brother Stephano made his appearance in my room, and burst into loud laughter enquiring whether I had forgotten the blow from his stick!
I was struck with amazement!
I begged the surgeon to leave me with the monk, and he immediately complied.
I must ask my readers whether it is possible, in the face of such extraordinary circumstances, not to feel superstitious!
What is truly miraculous in this case is the precise minute at which the event took place, for the friar entered the room as the word was hanging on my lips.
What surprised me most was the force of Providence, of fortune, of chance, whatever name is given to it, of that very necessary combination which compelled me to find no hope but in that fatal monk, who had begun to be my protective genius in Chiozza at the moment my distress had likewise commenced.
And yet, a singular guardian angel, this Stephano!
I felt that the mysterious force which threw me in his hands was a punishment rather than a favour.
I did not doubt that he could pull me out of my immediate distress, and whatever might be the power that sent him to me, I felt that I could not do better than to submit to its influence.
Brother Stephano was not done with me.
The destiny of that monk was to escort me to Rome.
"Chi va piano va sano," the friar said, as soon as the surgeon closed the door behind him.
He looked fresh and ruddy.
The same road that had broken me in a single day had cost him five leisurely ones.
he stood there calmly. Not a blister on his feet, not a worry in his head.
"As I was passing," he went on, drawing closer to the bed, "I heard there was an abbé here, secretary to the Venetian ambassador in Rome, robbed in Valcimara and laid up at the inn. I came to see if it was you. Since you are back on your legs, we can start again together. For your sake I will even walk six miles a day. Come, let us forget the past and be on our way."
"I am not going anywhere," I answered. "My purse is gone, and I owe twenty paoli."
He crossed himself as if invoking a household spirit.
"I will find the money in the name of Saint Francis."
He left without another word. I watched the door close and told myself that if the saint had chosen such an agent, heaven had a strange sense of humour.
An hour later he came back, but he did not come alone. Behind him walked the constable from the night of my misery, the same man who had called his den the house of the most honest officer in the Papal States.
"Reverend sir," the worthy fellow said, bowing deeply, "if I had known who you were, I would have kept you here as my guest. I will give you forty paoli, provided you will obtain for me the protection of your ambassador. If you fail, you will repay me. I must have your written acknowledgment."
"I have no objection," I replied.
Stephano beamed.
The constable counted out the coins on the table.
I settled my debts, put on my coat, and, leaning on the friar's heavy arm, left Seraval in the company of the very man whose stick I had so heartily earned at Tolentino.
About one in the afternoon we noticed a hovel a little off the road, half sunk in its own dust, and Stephano said,
"It is far yet to Collefiorito, we shall sleep there."
I argued that we would find nothing but filth and trouble, that one more stretch of road would give us a decent bed. He shrugged, and that was the end of the debate. I followed him.
Inside we found a scene that might have softened a stone.
On a torn pallet, an old man lay twisted in his rags, his skin the color of old parchment. Two women, neither young nor pleasing, moved about the room with the dull look of people who had long since given up expecting anything from life.
Three children, entirely naked, crept on the floor like little animals. A cow chewed in a dark corner and a cursed dog which barked continually.
The sight tightened my throat, but the good son of Saint Francis, instead of opening his miraculous pockets, raised his voice.
"In the name of Saint Francis," he announced, "you will give us supper."
"You must boil the hen," the dying man wheezed to the women, "and bring up the bottle from the cellar, the one I have kept these twenty years."
The effort threw him into such a fit of coughing that I thought he would suffocate on his own chest.
Stephano leaned over him and promised that, through the grace of Saint Francis, he would grow young and well again.
For my part, misery made me itch to be gone. I said that I would push on to Collefiorito and wait for him there.
The women clung to my sleeves and begged me to stay. Between their insistence and the friar's obstinacy, I remained.
The hen boiled for four long hours. When they set it on the table it was an exercise for the strongest teeth in Christendom.
I pulled the cork from the fabled bottle and found only sharp vinegar that bit the nostrils.
My patience ended there.
I seized Stephano's famous batticaslo, his bottomless cloak, and plunged my hand into its pious depths. Out came enough bread, meat and cheese to make a real supper.
The two women stood stock still, their mouths half open, their eyes round with surprise, staring at the provisions that had just leapt from the friar's holy pockets.
We all ate with good appetite, and, after our supper the women made for us two large beds of fresh straw.
The only candle sputtered to its end while they worked.
As soon as the room sank into darkness we stretched ourselves on the rustling heaps, the air thick with the sour smell of the stable that served as our chamber.
We had been on the straw no more than five minutes when Stephano's voice cut through the dark.
"One of them has just lain down beside me," he called.
At the same instant the other slipped an arm around my neck and pressed her mouth to mine.
Her breath carried wine and garlic.
I pushed her off.
Stephano grunted and fought his own assailant.
Mine had more courage. She came at me again, groping for my shoulders, insisting on sharing my straw.
I sprang up.
Something heavy hit my chest.
The dog, roused and furious, had leapt at my throat. Snarling teeth at my ear decided the matter.
I sank back, rigid on my heap, with the beast growling against my cheek.
On the other side of the room Stephano screamed and cursed, the woman giggled and clawed, the dog barked as if he meant to bring the house down.
The old man on the pallet answered with a rattle of coughing.
The children whimpered in their sleep.
There was nothing but noise, a whirl of bodies in the dark.
At last the friar's thick habit saved him.
He tore himself from his huntress, pushed past the dog and groped for his stick.
When his hand found it he began to swing, laying about him to right and left, striking whatever his arm could reach.
A woman cried out, "Oh, God!" in a voice that ended on a sob.
"She has her quietus," Stephano growled.
Then everything broke off at once. The dog no longer barked. The old man's cough did not return. The children slept on, heavy as stones.
The women, who had just tried so hard to force their affection on us, now huddled in a corner, afraid of the friar's way of making love.
Silence settled over the hovel. On our beds of straw, scratched and bruised, we finished the night in peace.