This question gave Michel more confidence in the man than any promises or oaths could have done. He looked at him for the first time, and noticed an expression of extraordinary vigor and fanatical enthusiasm on that wasted, earth-colored face. He was more than a brigand, he was a wolf, a vulture, always ready to fall upon a bleeding quarry, to tear it to pieces and glut his rage in its entrails. One could see that his whole life would be too short to avenge his son's death. He did not suggest to his guests that he should guide them in their flight. He was in haste to have done with his duty to them, so that he could go up to the castle to see if any _campiere_ were still breathing and to insult him in his death agony. LII CONCLUSION The three fugitives occupied twice the time in returning to Catania that it had taken them to go to Sperlinga. The Piccinino could not travel long without falling forward on his mule's neck, prostrated by fever. Then they would halt in some cave or deserted ruin, and the monk was obliged to give him wine to drink to keep up his strength, although he realized that it increased the fever. They had to follow steep and difficult roads, or rather to avoid every sort of road, in order not to expose themselves to the risk of inopportune encounters. Fra Angelo expected to find, halfway to Catania, a poor family upon whom he could rely as upon himself, to shelter his patient and nurse him; but he found only a deserted house, already half in ruins. Poverty had driven the poor creatures from their home. They could not pay the tax assessed on the house. Perhaps they were in prison. It was a serious disappointment to the monk and his companion. They had purposely kept at a distance from the region overrun by the brigands, because the absence of danger made the police less active in the southern part of the island. But when they found the only place of refuge upon which they could rely in that part of the mountains entirely deserted, they were really alarmed. In vain did the Piccinino urge the monk and Michel to leave him to his fate, declaring that, as soon as he was alone, necessity would endow him with superhuman strength. They refused, as the reader will imagine, and, having discussed all possible expedients, they decided upon the safest and most certain of all, although it seemed the boldest; it was to take Carmelo to the Palmarosa palace and keep him in hiding there until he was in a condition to fly. The princess would simply have to treat certain persons with the faintest suggestion of deference to avert any possible suspicion of her conduct; and in such an emergency, when Michel might be suspected of having assisted in the rescue of the Piccinino, she would not hesitate to deceive the court party as to her political sentiments.