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Updated: June 13, 2025
Wogan crossed to a table, looking neither to the right nor the left, above all not looking towards the bed hangings. He found the letter upon the table just as he had left it. It could convey no knowledge of his mission, he was sure. It had not even the appearance of a letter in cipher; it might have been a mere expression of Christmas good wishes from one friend to another.
Now he had noticed in the morning that there were only two horses in the building, and those two were tied up in the stalls next to that which his pony occupied. He walked along the range of stalls. The two horses were there, then came a gap of empty stalls, and beyond the gap he counted six other horses. Wogan became at once curious about those six other horses.
"I have ordered them," said Gaydon, "at the post-house. I will fetch them;" and he hurried off upon his errand. Wogan turned to O'Toole. "And the bill?" "I have paid it." "There is no one awake in the house?" "No one but the landlady." "Good! Can you keep her engaged until we are ready?" "To be sure I can. She shall never give a thought to any man of you but myself."
He looked again doubtfully to the Cardinal, who said with his pleasant smile, "I will wager Mr. Wogan a box at the Opera on the first night that he returns, that he will return empty-handed." Wogan rose to his feet and replied good-humouredly, "It's a wager I take the more readily in that your Eminence cannot win, though you may lose.
The wall was perhaps ten yards behind them. "A gateway," said she, "through which we have passed." "The gateway of Italy," answered Wogan; and he drew the lash once or twice across the pony's back and so was silent. Clementina looked at his set and cheerless face, cheerless as that chill morning, and she too was silent.
He ran back to Gaydon. "It might be a courier to arrest us. If I shout, drive fast as you can to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Italy." He hurried down the road and was hailed by O'Toole. "I have it," said he. Wogan turned and ran by O'Toole's stirrup to the carriage. "The landlady has a good conscience and sleeps well," said O'Toole. "I found the house dark and the doors shut.
Immediately the lady drew back. "Oh!" she said with a start, looking at Wogan. Wogan looked at her. "Ah!" said he, thoughtfully. They eyed each other for a moment, each silently speculating what the other was doing alone at this hour and in such a haste to reach Bologna. "You are English?" she said with a great deal of unconcern, and she asked in English.
Wogan felt the jerk, understood the danger, and saw its remedy at the same instant. He did not resist the impetus, he threw his body into it, he sprang from the stairs forwards, tearing his cloak from the leader's hands, he sprang across the leader, across the soldier who had fired at him, and he dropped with all his weight into the arms of the third man with the pierced throat.
"I do not know but what her Highness," he wrote, "will receive the best consolation for her sufferings on my account if she accepts so favourable a proposal, rather than run so many hazards as she must needs do as my wife. For myself, I have been summoned most urgently into Spain and am travelling thither on the instant." Wogan could make neither head nor tail of the letter.
Wogan had to let her sink back upon the steps, where she fell to whimpering. "I am not beautiful, I know; I never boasted that I was; but I have a figure and limbs that a painter would die to paint. And what do you make of me? A maggot, a thing all body like a nasty bear. Oh, curse the day that I set out with such tyrants!
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