As I was the means of spoiling the long-prepared and much-hoped for coup on which the robbers had set their highest hopes, as not a few men and women assisted me with information, aided me in other ways and protected me afterwards, I dare not name any names for fear that some survivor or some son or grandson of some participant in these doings might learn through me of long suspected but never verified treason to the unwritten law of the country-side and might bloodily avenge it on a surviving helper of mine or on any such helper's children or grandchildren. The Umbrian mountaineers are spleenful, tenacious of a grudge and ferociously acrimonious. I learnt all these amazing facts without difficulty, for slaves, peasants and yeoman alike assumed that I was of their party and was heart and soul with the outlaws. I was not subject to suspicion because I visited the post of the constabulary, became acquainted with every man of them, their sergeants and their officers and frequented their company. All the yeomen, peasants and slaves whose abodes were near the post, were, on the surface, on the best of terms with the road-constables; pretended to help them with information, retailing to them as rumors all sorts of inventions calculated to throw them off the scent of the outlaws, always with an air of the friendliest good-will; and loitered, idling about the post, chatting of local gossip. I was so entirely trusted that I was taken to the outlaws' camp and made acquainted with the entire band. Paradoxically the members of the band were all hulking burly ruffians of twenty-five to thirty-five years, whereas their chief, while big and brawny enough, was inferior in size to any of his subordinates and younger by six full years than the youngest of them. To him I was boisterously presented as a brother, for his name also was Felix. In fact, he was the man since famous as Felix Bulla, for long the most redoubtable outlaw in Italy. Then he was hardly more than a lad, for all his bulk and strength and ferocity. He had been appointed chief of the band by the King of the Highwaymen in person, who held him in the warmest regard for his ruthlessness, courage, skill, and cunning, especially for his cunning, rating him, as I was told by all the band, and having proclaimed him to them, as the most subtle and crafty outlaw alive after himself. Bulla, like everybody else, appeared to take to me and treated me as an equal, after conversing with me for hours at a time. I was always a welcome guest at any of the bandits' camps and they often made me show off my admired powers on fox-cubs, badgers, weasels and other such wild creatures which they or their peasant friends had trapped alive. My ability to tame, handle, fondle and make tractable to anyone such animals appeared a source of unflagging interest and unceasing entertainment to these ruffians.