"What do you mean, you shuffler?" panted the fire-eating poet.
"Is your courage a sham as well as your honesty?"

"Everything about me is a sham," responded the ex-courier
in complete good humour. "I am an actor; and if I ever had
a private character, I have forgotten it. I am no more a genuine brigand
than I am a genuine courier. I am only a bundle of masks,
and you can't fight a duel with that." And he laughed with boyish pleasure
and fell into his old straddling attitude, with his back to the skirmish
up the road.

Darkness was deepening under the mountain walls, and it was not easy
to discern much of the progress of the struggle, save that tall men
were pushing their horses' muzzles through a clinging crowd of brigands,
who seemed more inclined to harass and hustle the invaders
than to kill them. It was more like a town crowd preventing
the passage of the police than anything the poet had ever pictured
as the last stand of doomed and outlawed men of blood. Just as he was
rolling his eyes in bewilderment he felt a touch on his elbow,
and found the odd little priest standing there like a small Noah
with a large hat, and requesting the favour of a word or two.

"Signor Muscari," said the cleric, "in this queer crisis
personalities may be pardoned. I may tell you without offence
of a way in which you will do more good than by helping the gendarmes,
who are bound to break through in any case. You will permit me
the impertinent intimacy, but do you care about that girl?
Care enough to marry her and make her a good husband, I mean?"

"Yes," said the poet quite simply.