I could get no more out of Marc'antonio that day, nor indeed did the pain I suffered allow me to continue the catechism. A little before night fell he lifted me again and carried me to a bed of clean-smelling heather and fern he had prepared within the hut; and, all the night through, the slightest moan from me found him alert to give me drink or shift me to an easier posture. Our total solitude seemed from the first to breed a certain good-fellowship between us: neither next day nor for many days did he remit or falter in his care for me. But his manner, though not ungentle, was taciturn. He seemed to carry about a weight on his mind; his brow wore a constant frown, vexed and unhappy. Once or twice I caught him talking to himself. "To be sure it was enough to madden all the saints: and the Prince is not one of them. . . ." "What was enough to madden all the saints, O Marc'antonio?" I asked from my bed. Already he had turned in some confusion, surprised by the sound of his own voice. He was down on hands and knees, and had been blowing upon the embers of a wood fire, kindled under a pan of goat's milk. The goat herself browsed in the sunlight beyond the doorway, in the circuit allowed by a twenty-foot tether. "What was enough to madden all the saints, O Marc'antonio?" "Why," said he, savagely, "your standing up to him and denying his birth and his sister's before all the crowd. I did not think that anything could have saved you." "If I remember, I added that the Queen Emilia's bare word would be enough for me." "So. But you denied it on his father's, and that is what his enemies, the Paolists all, would give their ears to hear--yes, and Pasquale Paoli himself, though he passes for a just man." "Marc'antonio," said I, seriously, "are the Prince and Princess in truth the children of King Theodore?" "As God hears me, cavalier, they are his twin children, born in the convent of Santa Maria di Fosciandora, in the valley of the Serchio, some leagues to the north of Florence; and on the feast-day of Saint Mark these sixteen years ago." "Then King Theodore either knew nothing of it, or he was a liar." "He was a liar, cavalier." "Stay a moment. I have a mind to tell you the whole story as it came to me, and as I should have told it to the Prince Camillo, had he treated me with decent courtesy." Marc'antonio ceased blowing the fire and sitting back on his heels disposed himself to listen. Very briefly I told him of my journey to London, my visit to the Fleet, and how I received the crown with Theodore's blessing. "That he denied having children I will not say: but (I remember well) my father took it for granted that he had no children, and he said nothing to the contrary. Indeed on any other assumption his gift of the crown to me would have been meaningless."