The longer he thought the more delightful the idea became, and he
resolved to carry it out, for the fine tales he had heard made him more
discontented than ever with his present simple, care-free life. Up he
got, and by the light of the moon took from the old chest his best suit.
Moving very softly, he put on the breeches and jacket of rough blue
cloth, the coarse linen shirt, the red sash, and the sandals of russet
leather that laced about his legs to the knee. A few clothes, with his
rosary, he tied up in a handkerchief, and laid the little bundle ready
with his Sunday hat, a broad-brimmed, pointed-crowned affair with a red
band and cock’s feather to adorn it.
Then he sat at the window waiting for dawn to come, fearing to sleep
lest he be too late. It seemed an almost endless night, the first he had
ever spent awake, but red streaks came in the east at last, and he stole
to the door, meaning to creep noiselessly downstairs, take a good hunch
of bread and a gourd full of wine and slip off while the women slept.
To his dismay he found the door barred on the outside. His courage had
ebbed a little as the time for action came; but at this new insult he
got angry again, and every dutiful impulse flew away in a minute.
"Ah, they think to keep me, do they? Behold, then, how I cheat the silly
things! They have never seen me climb down the fig-tree, and thought me
safe. Now I will vanish, and leave them to tear their hair and weep for
me in vain."
Flinging out his bundle, and carefully lowering his old guitar, Tino
leaned from the little window, caught the nearest branch of the tree
that bent toward the wall, and swung himself down as nimbly as a
squirrel. Pausing only to pick several bunches of ripe grapes from the
vine about the door, he went softly through the garden and ran away
along the road toward Nice as fast as his legs could carry him.
Not till he reached the top of the long hill a mile away, did he slacken
his lively pace; then climbing a bank, he lay down to rest under some
olive-trees, and ate his grapes as he watched the sun rise. Travellers
always left the Falcone Inn early to enjoy the morning freshness, so
Tino knew that Signor Mario would soon appear; and when the horses
paused to rest on the hill-top, the "little nightingale" would present
himself as unexpectedly as if he had fallen from heaven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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