Just then the carriage rolled on something harder than the graveled road. Danglars hazarded a look on both sides of the road, and perceived monuments of a singular form; and his mind now recalled all the details Morcerf had related, and comparing them with his own situation, he felt sure he must be on the Appian Way. On the left, in a sort of valley, he perceived a circular excavation. It was the Circus of Caracalla. On a word from the man who rode at the side of the carnage, it stopped. At the same time the door was opened. “Scendi!” exclaimed a commanding voice.
Danglars instantly descended; though he did not yet speak Italian, he understood it very well. More dead than alive, he looked around him. Four men surrounded him, besides the postilion.
“Di qua,” said one of the men, descending a little path leading out of the Appian Way, in the midst of the numerous inequalities of the surface of the Campagna. Danglars followed his guide without opposition, and had no occasion to turn round to see whether the three others were following him. Still it appeared as though they stopped at equal distances from one another, like sentinels. After walking for about ten minutes, during which Danglars did not exchange a single word with his guide, he found himself between a hillock and a clump of high weeds; three men, standing silent, formed a triangle, of which he was the center. He wished to speak, but his tongue refused to move.
“Avanti!” said the same sharp and imperative voice.
This time Danglars had double reason to understand; for if the word and gesture had not explained the speaker’s meaning, it was clearly expressed by the man walking behind him, who pushed him so rudely that he struck against the guide. This guide was our friend Peppino, who dashed into the thicket of high weeds, through a path which none but lizards or weasels could have imagined to be an open road.
Peppino stopped before a rock overhung by thick hedges; the rock, with its half-hidden opening, afforded a passage to the young man, who disappeared like the evil spirits of fairy dramas into their traps. The voice and gesture of the man who followed Danglars ordered him to do the same. There was no longer any doubt, the bankrupt was in the hands of Roman banditti. Danglars acquitted himself like a man placed between two dangerous positions, and who is rendered brave by fear. Notwithstanding his large stomach, certainly not intended to penetrate the fissures of the Campagna, he slid down like Peppino, and, closing his eyes, fell upon his feet. As he touched the ground, he opened his eyes.
The path was wide but dark. Peppino, who cared little for being recognized now he was in his own territories, struck a light, and lit a torch. Two other men descended after Danglars, forming the rearguard, and pushing Danglars whenever he happened to stop, they arrived by a gentle declivity at the center of an open space of sinister appearance. Indeed, the walls, hollowed out in sepulchers, placed one above the other, seemed, in contrast with the white stones, to open their large dark eyes, like those which we see on the faces of the dead. A sentinel struck his carbine against his left hand.
“Who goes there?” he cried.
“Friends! friends!” said Peppino; “but where is the captain?”
“There!” said the sentinel, pointing over his shoulder to a sort of large hall, hollowed out of the rock, the lights from which shone into the passage through the large arched openings.
“Fine spoil, captain, fine spoil!” said Peppino, in Italian, and taking Danglars by the collar of his coat, he dragged him to an opening resembling a door, through which they entered the hall, of which the captain appeared to have made his dwelling-place.