After a while he lifted up his face, and said, "I shall go to Lucca for you, Don Francis. It is certain that you must not cross the frontier, and equally certain that there is no other person here who could strive more heartily to help you. But I dare not myself go alone. I shall get Il Nanno to go with me--a very good old fellow and as shrewd as a winter wind. We shall disguise ourselves, of course, and be off before dawn to- morrow. He shall go as my wife." "Your wife, my dear!" I exclaimed. "I should like to know what old fellow could play the woman beside you." "Seeing that I get my living by so doing, I don't mind owning that there is no one," he agreed. "The trouble is that I should do it too well. When you see Il Nanno you will admit that my proposals are as prudent as they seem the reverse. I'll go and fetch him, and you shall judge. Remember always that his name is Aristarcho; it would be a mortal affront to use that nickname of ours, for he is sensitive to a degree, like all these hunchbacks, and as fierce as a wild cat. Stay here--I will bring him up to you." He disappeared into the house, and presently returned, followed by his proposed wife. Signor Aristarcho was a dwarf of the most repulsive and uncompromising type. He cannot have been much more than four feet in height; he had a head nearly as large as his body, the strong-jawed, big-nosed, slit- mouthed head of some Condottiere of old, some Fortebraccio or Colleone of history and equestrian statuary. His eyes were small, staring, but extremely intelligent, his flesh spare and strained under the skin; he was beardless and as warty as a toad's back; he never smiled, spoke little and seemed to be afraid lest the air should get within him and never get out again, for he only opened the corner of his mouth to emit a word or two, and screwed it down immediately he had done. His poor deformed body was like that of Punchinello, a part for which he was famous in the theatres--protuberant before, hunched up between his shoulders behind, and set upon little writhen fleshless legs like wooden spigots. In manner he was excessively punctilious, grave, collected, oracularly sententious. I know that he was exquisitely sensitive to ridicule and remorseless in punishing it. It was not hard to understand-- the moment I set eyes upon this poor monster--that, with the young and beautiful Belviso masquerading as a woman by his side, trouble must succeed trouble without end. On the other hand, I could not for the life of me see how the parts were to be reversed with any reasonable assurance. But the good youth himself had no misgivings. After an exchange of careful courtesies I addressed myself to the dwarf. "Signor Aristarcho," I said, "this charitable young man has assured me of your active sympathy with my anxieties. You see before you a victim of fortune's extremest spite, who can sue for your favours with nothing but his tears----"