"Are you going to live with us?" said the eldest, who was about eight years of age.
"O, I wish you would! It is so nice to stop in these mountains. There are plenty of beautiful flowers, and birds' nests, too. I have three already; I will show them to you, and then we will go and find some more. But what is that you have got under your arm?"
"What pretty pictures! O, mother, come and see! Here are mountains, and men, and goats. Did you make them all?"
Attracted by the call of the child, a lady came out of the principal tent. She was yet young, tall, and covered with a medley of garments from various costumes. Her face sparkled with energy, and might have been called beautiful. She threw a sad glance at Salvator, and approached him haughtily, as if to give an order. But seeing the two children busily looking over the sketch-book, and observing the familiar way with which both treated their new acquaintance, she appeared to change her manner somewhat, and began to look at the pictures herself, and to admire them. At the end of half an hour the mother and the children seemed like old friends of Salvator Rosa.
The woman was the wife of the chief. A daughter of an honorable family, she married a young man at Pisa, her native city, who proved to be captain of this band of robbers. She could not well leave the company into which she had been betrayed; and so, with a noble self-denial, she became resigned to her hard lot. An unwilling witness of the many crimes of her husband and his companions, she suffered cruelly in her resignation. Yet her fidelity, her virtue,--things rarely known, but sometimes respected among these mountain brigands,--had given her a moral power over the men as well as over her husband. More than once she had used this means to temper their ferocity, and obtain pardon for their unfortunate prisoners.
Just then one of the brigands came and brought to the prisoner the order from the chief that he should write to his friends to obtain money for his ransom. The man was going, under a disguise, to the city of Florence; and he offered to deliver any letters intrusted to his care. He indicated the place where the ten thousand ducats must be left, so that Salvator might inform his correspondent.