not all. Not a sound anywhere except the drops of water on
the stone, the oaths of one of the players who swears by the _sango
del seminaro_, and from underneath my room in the inn parlour the eager
voice of our friend mingling with the sputterings of the illustrious
Paganetti, who is interpreter, in his conversation with the not less
illustrious Piedigriggio.

M. Piedigriggio (gray feet) is a local celebrity. He is a tall, old man
of seventy-five, with a flowing beard and a straight back. He wears a
little pilot coat, a brown wool Catalonian cap on his white locks. At
his belt he carries a pair of scissors to cut the long leaves of the
green tobacco he smokes into the hollow of his hand. A venerable-looking
person in fact, and when he crossed the square, shaking hands with
the priest, smiling protectingly at the gamblers, I would never have
believed that I was looking at the famous brigand Piedigriggio, who held
the woods in Monte-Rotondo from 1840 to 1860, outwitted the police and
the military, and who to-day, thanks to the proscription by which he
benefits, after seven or eight cold-blooded murders, moves peaceably
about the country which witnessed his crimes, and enjoys a considerable
importance. This is why: Piedigriggio has two sons who, nobly following
in his footsteps, have taken to the carbine and the woods, in their
turn not to be found, not to be caught, as their father was, for twenty
years; warned by the shepherds of the movements of the police, when the
latter leave a village, they make their appearance in it. The eldest,
Scipio, came to mass last Sunday at Pozzonegro. To say they love them,
and that the bloody hand-shake of those wretches is a pleasure to all
who harbour them, would be to calumniate the peaceful inhabitants of
this parish. But they fear them, and their will is law.

Now, these Piedigriggios have taken it into their heads to favour our
opponent in the election. And their influence is a formidable power, for
they can make two whole cantons vote against us. They have long
legs, the rascals, as long in proportion as the reach of their guns.
Naturally, we have the police on our side, but the brigands are far more
powerful. As our innkeeper said this morning: "The police, they go away;
_ma_ the _banditti_ they stay." In the face of this logical reasoning
we understood that the only thing to be done was to treat with the
Gray-feet, to try a "job," in fact. The mayor said something of this to
th