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Beppo writhed his person at the continuance of the questionings, and obtaining a pause, he rushed into his statement: 'The Signor Mertyrio was well, and on the point of visiting Italy, and quitting the wave-embraced island of fog, of beer, of moist winds, and much money, and much kindness, where great hearts grew. The signorina corresponded with him, and with him only.
"It is useless to try and force anything out of them," I warned. "Remember the school-teacher is forbidden by law even to touch them." They slipped away from his knee, and stood as before. "Listen," I continued. "Got a father, Beppo?" He surveyed me with some slight astonishment. "Sure," he replied. "Of course I got a father, silly." "Well, where is he?"
But his gaiety had left him. Neither in his letters nor his verse did he recapture the fun which we find in Beppo. The first line takes the reader into the very heart of the city and is one of the best-known single lines in all poetry. Familiar as the stanzas are, it would be ridiculous to write of Byron in Venice without quoting them again:
"Hey, hey!" he cried, as there was a prodigious scuffling up the chimney. "Now he strangles, now he strangles!" A shower of soot came down. Beppo flacked about the room; then two heavy objects fell. Beppo crept up. "Mary Virgin, he's killing birds," he said, in an awed whisper, and picked up two owls with wagging heads. The recesses of the chimney were still very lively.
Ammiani whispered quickly to know whether she had decided for the morrow. She nodded, and ran up to her mother, who cried: 'At this hour! And Beppo has been here after you, and he told me I wrote for him, in Italian, when not a word can I put to paper: I wouldn't! and you are threatened by dreadful dangers, he declares. His behaviour was mad; they are all mad over in this country, I believe.
Tony, who had never had anything to love except a stray cur or two, which he had always lost after a few days' friendship, felt as if he could have suffered himself to be put to death for either of these two; while Beppo came in for a large share of his unclaimed affections. The chief subject of their reading was the life of the Master, who was so intimately dear to the heart of old Oliver.
But, among the many obscure records that exist in the Italian, French, and German languages, touching this arch impostor, there is a hint of a night adventure in the harem of a high and mighty personage, at Mecca, whereby the latter was put out of doors, with his robes torn and his beard singed, by his own domestics, and left to wander in the streets, while Beppo, in disguise, received the salaams and sequins of the establishment, including the attentions of the fair ones therein caged, for an entire night.
Without replying to his remark, I told old Sybille to fetch Beppo and Mirza, and signed to the overseer to leave me. He showed no disposition to obey. "This looks like an examination," said he sneeringly, "and I shall take leave to be present at it." "None of your insolence, Mr Bleaks," said I; "be so good as to take yourself off and wait my orders."
Beppo here is an example that the style is useless for controversy. This Luigi baffles him at every step." "Some," rejoined Carlo, "say that Beppo has had the virtue to make you his study." Agostino threw himself on his back and closed his eyes. "That, then, is more than you have done, signor Tuquoque.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat back in his seat, very pale. Clearly Bobby was through with him. First Nikky had forgotten him, and now the American boy had learned his unfortunate position as one of the detested order, and would have none of him. "You see," said Miss Braithwaite, with an air of relief, "he did not know you." Up on the box the man beside Beppo kept his hand on the revolver.
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