Only at intervals a dull sound like the grating noise of a file seemed to
issue from the old edifice; but it was so indistinct and so often
interrupted that it was not sufficient to destroy the solitude and silence
of the place.
Suddenly two heavy strokes, as if from a hammer, resounded through the
garden. Some one had knocked at the exterior door for admittance.
A few moments afterwards a man appeared on the staircase of the pavilion,
and descended into the garden.
He was tall and slender; his hair and beard were red, and a red moustache
covered his upper lip. His cheeks, though sunken and emaciated, were very
red. His eyes were wild in their expression. His arms and legs were of
extraordinary length; his movements were heavy and slow, as though his
limbs had been dislocated and his muscles without strength.
His dress denoted him to be a menial: he wore a vest of black leather, a
red doublet and breeches of the same color, without embroidery or
ornament.
At this moment his sleeves were rolled up, and his thin arms were bare to
the elbows. In his hand he held a file, and apparently he had been
interrupted in some urgent work by the knock at the door. Having reached
the outer door, he drew a key from his doublet, and asked in Italian: "Who knocks?"
"Open the door, Julio; it is your companion Bernardo," was the reply in
the same tongue.
"Of course, on the way you stopped at the Camel, and drank some pots of
Hamburg beer? Did you bring me as much as a pint?" asked the man with the
red beard. "Nothing? have you nothing? I have worked until I am exhausted;
I am dying of hunger, and no one thinks of me. Let me see the spring."
Saying these words, he took from his companion's hands a bent steel spring
and examined it attentively, closing and opening it as if to judge of its
form and power of resistance.
Bernardo was a deformed man of low stature; the projection on his back
might be styled a hump--it was so prominent. His physiognomy denoted
pusillanimity; but there was, at the same time, a malicious sparkle in his
eye, and it was with a mocking smile that he contemplated the man with the
red beard.
The latter said to him in a commanding tone: "The spring appears to be
good. Go bring me a pint of Rhenish wine from the Saint George."
"You know well that our master has forbidden it. Let me go; the signor
ordered me to return immediately to the factory."