“This,” said he, “I ought to employ in your service, for if you had not knocked down the tribune I could never have picked it up. In making my run over the mountain, I struck upon his correspondence. Oh! the curse of curiosity! if I had not stopped to delight myself with the whole scandal of Rome, I should have been here in time. But I lingered, lost an hour in laughing, and when I set out in the dusk lost my way, for the first time in my life. Before setting off, however, I wrote a letter, ridiculing Florus in all points, burlesquing the people about him, scoffing at everybody in the most heroic style; and having subscribed the name of the unlucky tribune, addressed it to one of the most notorious personages in all Italy, and placed it where it is sure to be seen, and as sure to be carried to the most noble of procurators. Now could I not begin a correspondence with the governor, and act the courier myself? Yet, to hit upon the subject——” He paused. The letter that I had found occurred to me. I showed it to our adroit friend. He was in ecstasies. He kissed it over and over, and played some of those antics which had already made me almost half doubt his sanity. He flung away the tablet. [Sidenote: The Beggar’s Confidence] “Go,” said he; “fiction is a fine thing in its way. But give me fact when I want to entrap a great man. He is so little used to truth that the least atom of it is a spell; the fresh bait will carry the largest hook. Aye, this is the letter for us; it has the sincerity of the sex, when they are determined to jilt a man; its abuse will cover me from top to toe with the cloak of a true ambassador.” “But the unpopularity of your credentials,” said I laughingly. “Let the potentate by whom they are sent settle that affair with the potentate by whom they are received,” replied he. “You will be hanged.” “I shall first get in.” CHAPTER XXIX _Prisoners in a Labyrinth_ [Sidenote: Before the Fortress] The day passed anxiously, for every sound of the huge fortress was heard in the thicket. The creaking of machines, brought up to the walls against future assault; the rattling of hammers; the rolling of wagons loaded with materials for the repair of the night’s damage; the calls of trumpet and clarion, and the march of patrols, rang perpetually in our ears. The depth of the copse justified the beggar’s generalship, and the son of El Hakim proved himself a master of the art of castrametation. Nothing could exceed his alertness in threading the mazes of this dwarf forest, where a wolf could scarcely have made progress and where a lynx would have required all his eyes. On my asking how he contrived to find his way through this labyrinth, he told me, that “for making one’s way in woods and elsewhere, there was nothing like a familiarity with smuggling and affairs of state.”