"Upon my word," he said, "although I do my utmost to despise you and hate you, I cannot succeed; I fancy that you have sufficient penetration to guess that I would rather kill you than save you, as I have undertaken to do. You are an embarrassment to me in respect to certain illusions which you can readily imagine: you balk me in certain hopes which I cherished, and which I am by no means inclined to renounce. But I am not bound by my word simply, but by a certain sympathetic feeling for you which I cannot shake off. I should lie if I said that I love you, and that it is a pleasant occupation to me to defend your life. But I esteem you, and that is a good deal. I assure you, you did well to answer me as you did; for now I can confess to you that this place sometimes brings on fits of madness; and I have formed terrible resolutions here on many a momentous occasion. You were not safe with me a moment ago; and I should not care to hear you utter a certain name again. Let us not stay here any longer, and do you take this stiletto, which I offered you once before. A Sicilian ought always to be ready to use it, and to my mind it is utterly insane to go about unarmed in the position you are in." "Let us go," said Michel, mechanically taking the proffered dagger. "My uncle says that time is important, and that they are waiting for us." "Waiting for _us_?" cried the bandit, leaping to his feet. "Waiting for you, you mean! Damnation! I wish that yonder cross and this stone might both sink into the ground! Young man, you may believe that I am an atheist, and that my heart is hard; but if you think it is of ice----Here, put your hand to it, and learn that desire and will have their seat there as well as in the brain!" He seized Michel's hand roughly, and held it to his breast. It was heaving with palpitations of such violence that one would have said that it was on the point of bursting. But when they had quitted the ravine, and had left the _Destatore's Cross_ behind them, the Piccinino began to hum, in a voice as sweet and pure as the breath of the night, a ballad in the Sicilian dialect, of which the refrain was: "Wine makes madness, love makes folly; my nectar is the blood of cowards, my mistress is my rifle." After this outburst of bravado, addressed to himself as well as to the ears of any Neapolitan police who might happen to be within hearing, the Piccinino began to talk with Michel in a remarkably self-possessed and tranquil strain. He discussed fine arts, literature, external politics, and the news of the day, with as much freedom, courtesy, and refinement as if they were in a salon or on a public promenade, and as if neither of them had any momentous affair on hand, any exciting subject to engross his thoughts.