l-tempered man." And courteously
lifting his hat he called to the postillion to drive on.

The hunchback at this, flushing red, laid a hand on the carriage door.

"Sir," said he, "I freely own myself in the wrong; but a smooth temper
was not one of the blessings my unknown parents bequeathed to me; and I
confess I had heard of you as one little concerned with your inferiors
except as they might chance to serve your pleasure."

It was Odo's turn to colour. "Look," said he, "at the fallibility of
rumour; for I had heard of you as something of a philosopher, and here I
find you not only taking a man's character on hearsay but denying him
the chance to prove you mistaken!"

"I deny it no longer," said Gamba stepping into the coach; "but as to
philosophy, the only claim I can make to it is that of being by birth a
peripatetic."

His dignity appeased, the hunchback proved himself a most engaging
companion, and as the carriage lumbered slowly toward Pianura he had
time not only to recount his own history but to satisfy Odo as to many
points of the life awaiting him.

Gamba, it appeared, owed his early schooling to a Jesuit priest who,
visiting the foundling asylum, had been struck by the child's quickness,
and had taken him home and bred him to be a clerk. The priest's death
left his charge adrift, with a smattering of scholarship above his
station, and none to whom he could turn for protection. For a while he
had lived, as he said, like a street-cat, picking up a meal where he
could, and sleeping in church porches and under street-arcades, till one
of the Duke's servants took pity on him and he was suffered to hang
about the palace and earn his keep by doing the lacquey's errands. The
Duke's attention having been called to him as a lad of parts, his
Highness had given him to the Marquess of Cerveno, in whose service he
remained till shortly before that young nobleman's death. The hunchback
passed hastily over this period; but his reticence was lit by the angry
flash of his eyes. After the Marquess's death he had lived for a while
from hand to mouth, copying music, writing poetry for weddings and
funerals, doing pen-and-ink portraits at a scudo apiece, and putting his
hand to any honest job that came his way. Count Trescorre, who now and
then showed a fitful recognition of the tie that was supposed to connect
them, at length heard of the case to which he was come and offered him a
trifling pension. This the hunchback ref