"Pardon me, signora," rejoined the bandit, obstinately. "If I had not informed you of these things, you would still have personal motives of even greater weight, which you do not choose to tell me, but which I have learned from Ninfo. I never enter into an affair without making myself thoroughly acquainted with it; and it sometimes falls to my lot, as you see, to question both parties. Permit me to continue my disclosures, therefore, and I trust that they will lead to disclosures on your part. "Abbé Ninfo did not examine very closely or ask many questions of the individual at your highness's park gate. After a moment, seeing that the cardinal continued somewhat agitated by the encounter, as if the young man's face had aroused memories which he could not arrange and place,--for his eminence often wears himself out, it seems, in such painful mental toil,--the abbé retraced his steps and examined the young man more carefully. The young man evidently had some reason for being on his guard, for he deceived the abbé, who really took him for a poor devil, and even gave him alms. But two days later, the abbé, having, for the purpose of spying, disguised himself as a workman employed in the preparations for your ball, soon discovered that his poor devil was a brilliant artist, very much petted and favored by your highness, and by no means in a position to accept alms at the gate of a palace, since he is the son of a well-to-do artisan, Pier-Angelo Lavoratori. "On the night succeeding this discovery, the abbé did not fail to place before Monsignor Hieronymo a sheet of paper containing this information in large letters. But by dint of trying to tighten the last remaining chords of the instrument, the abbé broke them. The cardinal did not understand. The names of Pier-Angelo and Michelangelo Lavoratori conveyed no meaning to him. He muttered a violent oath because Ninfo disturbed his slumber. And so," added the Piccinino, with malicious significance, "the fears which your highness entertains, or pretends to entertain, with respect to Pier-Angelo are entirely without foundation. Although the cardinal long ago prosecuted that excellent man as a conspirator, he has so completely forgotten him that even Ninfo has no hope of reviving the memory of an affair of which he himself knows nothing, and your protégé is in no danger from any denunciation by him, at present."