His honour forbidding him to kill me, the Prince Camillo had given orders to break my legs: and since to abandon me in this plight went against the conscience of his followers (and even, it is possible, against his own), he had left Marc'antonio behind to nurse me--thus gratifying a second spite. The Prince was an ingenious young man. So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture. Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched off, leaving us two alone. "Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this was my first intelligible question. Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?" "She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce satisfaction in the words. "And she--and you--tried to use it upon my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends! As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday, before her brother came." "I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than foolishly. I do not understand you at all--no, by the Mother of God, I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it would have been better for you, and in the end for her." "And for you also, Marc'antonio." He was silent. "And for you also, Marc'antonio?" I repeated it as a question. "Your escape would have been put down to me, Englishman. I had provided for that," he answered simply. "Forgive me," I muttered, thrown back upon sudden contrition. "I was thinking only that you must feel it a punishment to be left alone with me. I had forgot--" "It is hard," he interrupted, "to bear everything in mind when one is young." His tone was quiet, decisive, as of one stating a fact of common knowledge; but the reproof cut me like a knife. "The Princess has gone too?" I asked. "She has gone. They are all gone. That is why it would have been better for her too that you had escaped." I pondered this for a minute. "You mean," said I, "that--always supposing the Prince had not killed you in his rage--you would now be at her side?" He nodded. "Still, she has Stephanu. Stephanu will do his best," I suggested. "Against what, eh?" He put his poser to me, turning with angry eyes, but ended on a short laugh of contempt. "Do not try make-believe with me, O Englishman." "There is one thing I know," said I, doggedly, "that the Princess is in trouble or danger. And a second thing I know, that you and Stephanu are her champions. But a third thing, which I do not know, is why you and Stephanu hate one another."