He was confused and, boylike, tried to laugh off my praises. "You give me too high a character, sir," said he. "I am a graceless devil of the Veneto, without prospect or retrospect to be proud of, a poor creature who has to go to market with what wares he has. If I can look forward it is because I dare not look back. What I am doing for you now, for which you are so kind as to praise me, is not virtue. I wish to Heaven virtue were so easy got. Eat, however, drink and rest. If I am no better than I should be, I suppose I am not worse than I could be. And I cannot allow you to praise me for that." "You are of the race of the Samaritans," said I, "whether you hail from Venice or Tuscany. I am an Englishman, my name is Francis. How are you called?" He said, "I believe my name is Daniele; but they call me here, in the company, Belviso." "And they do well," I returned, "for that you certainly are, and, as far as I am concerned, you prove as good as you are good-looking." He shrugged his shoulders. "No one is better than he can help, I fancy, sir," he said. "There is every inducement to be wicked in this world. But I will say this of myself--and I dare say everybody else can say the same--that when I am good I am as good as gold, for I realise perfectly well my unusual estate and become a very usurer of virtue. But this is of rare occurrence, seeing that I am an actor. By ordinary, for the fifteen years that I have been in the world, I am remarkably vicious." "I cannot hear you say that, Belviso," I told him, "without giving you warning that, so long as I am in your company, and to the utmost of my powers, I shall restrain you from being anything of the sort." He started, looked at me for a moment, then kissed my hand. "I believe our Saviour sent you here to be his vicar in my regard," he said. "I don't know how long you may be in my company, for it depends mostly upon yourself. But I promise you in my turn that I shall never take ill whatsoever your honour may please to say to me; and I say that if I have the misfortune to lose sight of you this very night, I shall be the better for having known you, and shall go to sleep with more prospect of a decent to-morrow than I have ever done in the whole of my life." I judged that the best thing for this youth was to think more about my misfortunes than his own. I therefore told him how it was that I came before him in this plight, barefoot, bareheaded, bleeding and in rags. I told him of my concern for Virginia, of the deadly perils that beset her, and concluded by assuring him that the one service of any moment which he could do me was to devise me some means of communicating with Gioiachino, the vendor of cat's-meat in Lucca. Belviso had put his head between his knees, and so remained for some time after I had done speaking, in earnest meditation.