I expressed with the utmost plainness my astonishment at the pains he was at to get my society.  “My dear Francis,” he said, raising his eyebrows, as if in despair of making me understand his whim, “what greater proofs of my affection can I give you?  I have flayed your back and allowed you to flay mine.  I have filled your mouth with wool and carried you like a bale for three leagues in the middle of the night.  And you ask me why?  I can only say that I have a liking for you.  You are spirited, pious, ingenuous, and well-read.  As a man of many trades and accomplishments, I shall find you useful in a hundred ways.  You will understand that before we have been in Prato half an hour.  Honestly, my friend, I have twice tried to serve you in difficulties, and each time you have obstinately refused to acknowledge it.  Now, for a third time, I am going to oblige you.  Consider whether I am altogether undeserving; consider it when I am gone for your Virginia.”

I had nothing else half so interesting to do.  I pondered his acts towards me over and over again, but could not for the life of me fit them into any reasonable relation to himself.  That he meant to make profit out of me was certain; he lived for profit.  But how?  By selling me into slavery?  Had his explanations to the Customs-house men at the frontier been pure falsehood?  I knew that the Grand Duke Cosimo was surrounded by miserable young men of all colours, tongues and sizes, gathered from every quarter of the globe.  That was a humour of his which all his toadies and sycophants tried to indulge.  Probably his collection lacked an Englishman—­but even as I hotly determined that it should for ever lack one sooner than possess me, I remembered that this mad prince lay dying.  Palamone must needs know that; and then, what sort of a price did he hope for from a man with the death-rattle rising in his throat?  Did the heir-apparent, the Grand Prince Gastone, intend to maintain the collection?  It was possible.  Of some monstrous villainy of the sort I vehemently suspected Fra Palamone, and am the more glad, therefore, to record that in this particular case I did him a wrong.  He came back in good time with Virginia, who, her eyes alight, sprang towards me and snatched at my hands.  I let her kiss them, and was sincerely glad to see my friend again.  We devoured each other with questions.  Had she been in danger of the marchese?  She blushed at the supposition, and asked me what I was thinking her.  Had she been alarmed on my account?  No, not at first; but later she had been making inquiries.  Had I been uneasy?  I confessed that I had.  Fra Palamone, with some magnanimity, left us alone for the best part of an hour; he sat, I remember, on the edge of the hill looking towards Pistoja, reading his breviary, well removed from earshot.  This gave Virginia opportunity to exhibit her view of his behaviour.  “We had better travel with him for a while,” she said.  “He is known all over the country for a desperate rascal, but is