crowd behind the house maintained their
shouts and outcries. Under the circumstances, this uproar became
shockingly absurd, and out of place; so the guide hastened to put
an end to it. On the whole, he thought it was not worth while to
tell the truth, for the truth would have so excited the good people
of Albano, that they would, undoubtedly, have taken vengeance on
the strangers for such a disgrace as this. Therefore the guide
decided to let his fancy play around the actual fact, and thus it
was that the guide's story became an idealized version.

It was something to the following effect:--

The terrible wild boar, he said, had been completely indifferent
to their outcry, or had, perhaps, been afraid to come forth and
face so many enemies. He (the guide) had therefore determined to
try to smoke him out, and had borrowed their handkerchiefs for that
purpose, as there were no other combustibles to be had. Of this
they were already aware. He had tied these handkerchiefs together
in such a way that they would burn, and after setting fire to them,
had burled the blazing mass into the house. There it emitted its
stifling fumes till they confused, suffocated, frightened, and
confounded the lurking wild boar. Then, in the midst of this, the
heroic youth, armed with his gun, rushed forward and poured the
deadly contents of his piece into the body of the beast. Had it
been any other annual, it would undoubtedly have perished; but the
wild boar has a hide like sheet iron, and this one was merely
irritated by the shot. Still, though not actually wounded, he was
enraged, and at the same time frightened. In his rage and fear he
started from his lurking-place; he bounded forth, and made a savage
attack upon the party in front of the house. They stood their ground
firmly and heroically, and beat him off; whereupon, in despair, he
turned and fled, vanquished, to his lair in the Alban tunnel.

In this way the guide's vivid imagination saved the travellers from
the fury of the Alban people, by preventing that fury, and supplying
in its place self-complacency. The Alban people felt satisfied with
themselves and with this story. They accepted it as undoubted; they
took it to their homes and to their hearts; they enlarged, adorned,
improved, and lengthened it out, until, finally, it assumed the
amplest proportion, and became one of the most popular legends of
the place. What is still more wonderful, this very guide, who had
first creat