Every mind, where the students were carried up the mountains by the
banditti, in hopes of ransom, and one of them massacred, to bring the
parents to terms for the others. There was a story also of a gentleman
of Rome, who delayed remitting the ransom demanded for his son,
detained by the banditti, and received one of his son's ears in a
letter with information that the other would be remitted to him soon,
if the money were not forthcoming, and that in this way he would
receive the boy by instalments until he came to terms.
The fair Venetian shuddered as she heard these tales. The landlord,
like a true story-teller, doubled the dose when he saw how it operated.
He was just proceeding to relate the misfortunes of a great English
lord and his family, when the Englishman, tired of his volubility,
testily interrupted him, and pronounced these accounts mere traveller's
tales, or the exaggerations of peasants and innkeepers. The landlord
was indignant at the doubt levelled at his stories, and the innuendo
levelled at his cloth; he cited half a dozen stories still more
terrible, to corroborate those he had already told.
"I don't believe a word of them," said the Englishman.
"But the robbers had been tried and executed."
"All a farce!"
"But their heads were stuck up along the road."
"Old skulls accumulated during a century."
The landlord muttered to himself as he went out at the door, "San
Genaro, come sono singolari questi Inglesi."
A fresh hubbub outside of the inn announced the arrival of more
travellers; and from the variety of voices, or rather clamors, the
clattering of horses' hoofs, the rattling of wheels, and the general
uproar both within and without, the arrival seemed to be numerous.
