"I cannot hear you say that, Belviso," I told him, "without giving you
warning that, so long as I am in your company, and to the utmost of my
powers, I shall restrain you from being anything of the sort."

He started, looked at me for a moment, then kissed my hand. "I believe
our Saviour sent you here to be his vicar in my regard," he said. "I
don't know how long you may be in my company, for it depends mostly upon
yourself. But I promise you in my turn that I shall never take ill
whatsoever your honour may please to say to me; and I say that if I have
the misfortune to lose sight of you this very night, I shall be the
better for having known you, and shall go to sleep with more prospect of
a decent to-morrow than I have ever done in the whole of my life."

I judged that the best thing for this youth was to think more about my
misfortunes than his own. I therefore told him how it was that I came
before him in this plight, barefoot, bareheaded, bleeding and in rags. I
told him of my concern for Virginia, of the deadly perils that beset
her, and concluded by assuring him that the one service of any moment
which he could do me was to devise me some means of communicating with
Gioiachino, the vendor of cat's-meat in Lucca. Belviso had put his head
between his knees, and so remained for some time after I had done
speaking, in earnest meditation.

After a while he lifted up his face, and said, "I shall go to Lucca for
you, Don Francis. It is certain that you must not cross the frontier,
and equally certain that there is no other person here who could strive
more heartily to help you. But I dare not myself go alone. I shall get
Il Nanno to go with me--a very good old fellow and as shrewd as a winter
wind. We shall disguise ourselves, of course, and be off before dawn to-
morrow. He shall go as my wife."