“When I lend my manuscript to anybody I get laughed at,” said Ludovico. “But if your Excellency would condescend to dictate the spelling of the words to me, letter by letter, envious people would have to hold their tongues. Spelling is not genius.”
It was not till the evening of the second day that Fabrizio was able to land, in perfect safety, in an alder copse a league from Ponte-Lago-Oscuro. All the day long he lay hid in a hemp field, and Ludovico went on to Ferrara, where he hired a little lodging in the house of a needy Jew, who at once realized that there was money to be earned if he would hold his tongue. In the evening, as the darkness was falling, Fabrizio rode into Ferrara on a pony. He was in urgent need of care. The heat on the river had made him ill; the knife thrust in his thigh and the sword thrust Giletti had given him in the shoulder, at the beginning of their fight, had both become inflamed, and made him feverish.
The Jew landlord of their lodgings brought them a discreet surgeon, who, soon coming to the conclusion that there was money to be made, informed Ludovico that his conscience obliged him to report the wounds of the young man, whom Ludovico called his brother, to the police.
“The law is clear,” he added. “It is quite evident that your brother has not hurt himself, as he declares, by falling off a ladder with an open knife in his hand.”
Ludovico coldly answered the worthy surgeon to the effect that if he ventured to listen to the promptings of his conscience, he, Ludovico, would have the honour, before he left Ferrara, of falling upon him with an open knife in his hand. When he related the incident to Fabrizio he blamed him severely. But there was not an instant to be lost about decamping. Ludovico told the Jew he was going to try what an airing would do for his brother. He fetched a carriage, and our friends left the house, never to return to it again. My readers doubtless find these descriptions of all the steps necessitated by the lack of a passport very lengthy. But in Italy, and especially in the neighbourhood of the Po, everybody’s talk is about passports. As soon as they had slipped safely out of Ferrara, as if they were merely taking a drive, Ludovico dismissed the carriage, re-entered the town by a different gate, and then came back to fetch Fabrizio in a _sediola_, which he had hired to take them twelve leagues. When they were near Bologna, our friends had themselves driven across country, to the road leading into the city from Florence. They spent the night in the most wretched tavern they could discover, and the next morning, as Fabrizio felt strong enough to walk a little, they entered Bologna on foot. Giletti’s passport had been burned. The actor’s death must now be known, and it was less dangerous to be arrested for having no passport, than for presenting one belonging to a man who had been killed.