intelligence? There you are, in at the door. And now you will disturb the
signorina, and you will do nothing but make la Lazzeruola's ears lively.
Bounce! you are up the stairs. Bounce! you are on the landing. Thrum! you
drum at the door, and they are singing; they don't hear you. And now
you're meek as a mouse. That's it--if you don't hit the mark when you go
like a bullet, you 're stupid as lead. And they call you a clever fellow!
Luigi's day is to come. When all have paid him all round, they will
acknowledge Luigi's worth. You are honest enough, my Beppo; but you might
as well be a countryman. You are the signorina's servant, but I know the
turnings, said the rat to the cavaliere weazel.'

In a few minutes Beppo stepped from the house, and flung himself with his
back against the lintel of the doorway.

'That looks like determination to stop on guard,' said Luigi.

He knew the exact feeling expressed by it, when one has come violently on
an errand and has done no good.

'A flea, my feathery lad, will set you flying again.'

As it was imperative in Luigi's schemes that Beppo should be set flying
again, he slipped away stealthily, and sped fast into the neighbouring
Corso, where a light English closed carriage, drawn by a pair of the
island horses, moved at a slow pace. Two men were on the driver's seat,
one of whom Luigi hailed to come down then he laid a strip of paper on
his knee, and after thumping on the side of his nose to get a notion of
English-Italian, he wrote with a pencil, dancing upon one leg all the
while for a balance:--

'Come, Beppo, daughter sake, now, at once, immediate,
Beppo, signor.'

'That's to the very extremity how the little signora Inglese would
write,' said Luigi; yet cogitating profoundly in a dubitative twinkle of
a second as to whether it might not be the English habit to wind up a
hasty missive with an expediting oath. He had heard the oath of emphasis
in that island: but he decided to let it go as it stood. The man he had
summoned was directed to take it straightway and deliver it to one who
would be found at the house-door of the Maestro Rocco Ricci.

'Thus, like a drunken sentinel,' said Luigi, folding his arms, crossing
his legs, and leaning back. 'Forward, Matteo, my cherub.'

'All goes right?' the coachman addressed Luigi.

'As honey, as butter, as a mulberry leaf with a score of worms on it! The
wine and the bread and the cream-cheeses are inside, my dainty one, a