"’Sdeath!" thought I, while starting up from my hard couch, "I must have this creature flogged or hung! It is too ridiculous to be persecuted by a contemptible hunchback, who follows me like an evil genius everywhere. Olà, Signor Benedetto, Cavaliere del Castagno!" I cried aloud, as that redoubtable gentleman swung himself over a window of the podesta’s house and alighted in the street about a hundred yards from me. But without looking to where the voice came from—as he had evidently no wish to be recognised—he drew his hat over his eyes, threw his ample cloak over his disordered attire, and hurried down the Strada Larga. I remembered the podesta’s daughter—a pretty girl, from whom I had received my billet last evening. "Poor Ortensia!" thought I; "and thus your loving Benedict spends his tour of duty in the trenches!" Save himself, no one seemed yet stirring in Crotona; its ruined streets were completely deserted. At times a casual patrol of our troops passed; but these were far beyond hail: and, in truth, I looked forward with dread to being discovered in the cage—knowing too well it would furnish a subject for laughter to every corps in Sicily. The idea of the general’s aide-de-camp being barred up in an iron cage, like a common rogue, or a rat in a trap, was too replete with ridicule to be patiently endured: but, after a few attempts to break prison and escape, I was obliged to abandon the attempt and await my deliverance patiently. To increase my annoyance, a few withered and sun-burned gossips gathered round the parapet of a circular well (a fountain, by-the-bye, is ever the grand rendezvous of Italian gossips), and after filling their classic-shaped jars with water, they rested them on the margin of the spring, and stared at me to their full contentment; relating to the passers-by their own version of the story, with such additions and variations as the exuberance of their fancy or hatred of a heretic suggested. To the peasant come to market in his wolf-skin jacket and leather gaiters; the hind driving his team of oxen to the field; the shepherd on his way to the mountains; to the water-carrier; the impudent, rosy-faced itinerant improvisatore with his lute; and the white-bearded Franciscan, with his greasy angular hat, snuff-begrimed cassock, and begging-box;—to each and to all who stopped at the well, did these shrivelled crones relate, with great emphasis and gesticulation, the story of the sacrilege committed at the convent of St. Catherine by the English heretic.