The estafette was by this time equipped; for he had not lost an instant
in making his preparations while talking. The relay was ready: the
rosolio tossed off. He grasped the reins and the stirrup.
"Were there many robbers in the band?" said a handsome, dark young man,
stepping forward from the door of the inn.
"As formidable a band as ever I saw," said the estafette, springing
into the saddle.
"Are they cruel to travellers?" said a beautiful young Venetian lady,
who had been hanging on the gentleman's arm.
"Cruel, signora!" echoed the estafette, giving a glance at the lady as
he put spurs to his horse. "_Corpo del Bacco!_ they stiletto all the
men, and as to the women--"
Crack! crack! crack! crack! crack!--the last words were drowned in the
smacking of the whip, and away galloped the estafette along the road to
the Pontine marshes.
"Holy Virgin!" ejaculated the fair Venetian, "what will become of us!"
The inn of Terracina stands just outside of the walls of the old town
of that name, on the frontiers of the Roman territory. A little, lazy,
Italian town, the inhabitants of which, apparently heedless and
listless, are said to be little better than the brigands which surround
them, and indeed are half of them supposed to be in some way or other
connected with the robbers. A vast, rocky height rises perpendicularly
above it, with the ruins of the castle of Theodoric the Goth, crowning
its summit; before it spreads the wide bosom of the Mediterranean, that
sea without flux or reflux.
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