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nothing else. In the end Odoardo Zampi, the brother of Landulpho’s mother, came to hear these public rumours. Odoardo was a man who would not permit any insult to go unpunished. He considered himself insulted in the person of his sister and he had the infamous Bianca murdered that very day. When Landulpho went to call on his mistress he found her stabbed to death and lying in a pool of her own blood. He soon learned that this was the work of his uncle. He rushed to his house to punish him for it. He found it surrounded by the stalwarts of the town, who jeered at his rage.
    Not knowing on whom to vent his wrath Landulpho rushed to his mother’s house, intending to heap insults on her. The poor woman was with her daughter and was just about to sit down to table when she saw her son come in. She asked him whether Bianca was coming to eat with them.
    â€˜May she come and drag you off to hell,’ said Landulpho. ‘You, your brother and all the Zampi family.’
    His poor mother fell to her knees and said, ‘Dear God, forgive him his blasphemy.’
    At that moment the door crashed open and a pallid spectre entered, covered with stab wounds yet still bearing a ghastly likeness to Bianca.
    Mother and daughter began at once to pray and God gave them the strength to endure such an apparition without dying of fright.
    The phantom walked slowly forwards and sat down at table as though to dine. With a courage that could only have been inspired by the devil, Landulpho boldly took up a dish and presented it to her. The phantom opened her mouth so wide that her head seemed to split in two. A reddish flame issued forth from it. Then, with a hand that had been most horribly burnt, she took a morsel of food and swallowed it. It was heard to fall under the table. In this way she devoured the whole dish and all the morsels fell to the floor. Whenthe dish was empty the phantom stared at Landulpho with terrible eyes and said to him, ‘Landulpho, whenever I dine here I sleep here also. Come to bed.’
    At this point my father interrupted the chaplain and, turning to me, said, ‘Alphonse, my son, would you have been afraid if you had been Landulpho?’
    I replied, ‘Dear father, I assure you that I would not have felt even the slightest twinge of fear.’
    This reply seemed to satisfy my father and he was very jolly for the rest of the evening.
    So we spent our days with nothing to change their pattern except that in summer we sat down not around the fireplace but on the seats in front of the castle door. Six years passed in such sweet tranquillity. They seem to me now like so many weeks.
    When I had completed my seventeenth year my father decided to enter me in the Walloon Guards and wrote on this matter to his trustworthy old comrades. Those worthy and respectable officers together exerted on my behalf all the influence they possessed and managed to obtain for me a captain’s commission. When my father learned of this, he suffered a seizure so severe that his life was thought to be in danger. But he soon recovered and turned his mind to preparing for my departure. He wanted me to go by sea so that I might enter Spain by way of Cadiz and present myself to Don Enrique de Sa, the commandant of the Walloons, who was the person who had contributed most to my preferment.
    Even as the post-chaise was waiting drawn up and ready to leave in the courtyard of the castle, my father led me away to his bedroom and having closed the door behind us said, ‘My dear Alphonse, I am going to confide in you a secret which came down to me from my father and which you must pass on to your son, but only if he shows himself worthy of it.’
    As I was sure it was about some hidden treasure I replied that I had never looked on gold except as a means of helping the poor and needy.
    But my father said, ‘No, dear Alphonse, it is not about gold or silver. I want to teach you a secret pass in which by