"I am known by an hundred names, and seen in an hundred shapes," returned the robber. "Ask your officers how many they have seen me in, in this last month, and in this very city? I am the Venetian monk from Palestine, who was preaching at the Cross in the Piazza dei Leoni, while the three great houses beyond the square were emptied, on the fifth day of the plague. And I was the Austrian officer who came with his long retinue to the inn of 'The Golden Flask' (the host will remember what fell out in that lodging), bringing letters and despatches to the Gonfalonière from Cologne. I was the Genevese physician, who got good practice, and some money, by the 'infallible remedy against the plague;' and your lordships see, whatever I did for others, I had skill enough to keep clear from it myself. And it was I who ransacked half the houses in the Quartiere St Giovanni in only one night; robbing in a bull's hide, disguised with horns, when two fathers of the Order of Mercy met me, and ran away, mistaking me for the devil." "Have you not a wife, or a mistress, who is called Aurelia la Fiore?" "I have. Close with my proposal!" said the outlaw, who seemed excited by the conversation. "I would live, and be once more at liberty, for her sake!" "Is she your wife, or your mistress only?" "As chance will have it, not my wife according to the usages of our church. But she might have been. As far as affection is worth--passion, devotion--the asking in vain no prize which hand can win, or sacrifice which heart can make; as far as to have no rival--never to have had a rival--in the heart of her husband, so far she is my wife! There are women, perhaps, worse treated, and wives--the wives of princes--worse deserving." "Was not this Aurelia the daughter of an oil-farmer near Ferrara?" "She was. Then you have heard the tale? I stabbed the noble who thought her worth dishonouring, and would have borne her from me. Fortune had shared her stores more evenly between us than he imagined. To him she gave the wealth to purchase pleasure; to me the hand to win it. I was a vine-dresser then; and, but for that event, might have been one still." "Does Aurelia know this secret, which you would sell to us?" "That you shall know, my good lord, after you have bought it from me." "Where is Aurelia now?" "If you inherit not your kinsman's patrimony, Gonsalvo di Vasari, till you learn that, your patience, as well as your purse, shall fare the harder." "What if she were in our power?" The robber smiled contemptuously at the supposition. "What if I should tell you that she is _here_--in chains and peril--and that every insolence you utter added to her danger?" "That would be almost a false assertion, Gonsalvo di Vasari; and the mouths of your race should be clear from dishonour."