“We’re too low down here for that kind of machinery,” he said.  “They say that Providence is on the side of the Austrians.  Now then, what have you to communicate to me?  This time I let you come to my house trust at all, trust entirely.  I think that’s the proverb.  You are admitted:  speak like a guest.”

Luigi’s preference happened to be for categorical interrogations.  Never having an idea of spontaneously telling the whole truth, the sense that he was undertaking a narrative gave him such emotions as a bad swimmer upon deep seas may have; while, on the other hand, his being subjected to a series of questions seemed at least to leave him with one leg on shore, for then he could lie discreetly, and according to the finger-posts, and only when necessary, and he could recover himself if he made a false step.  His ingenious mind reasoned these images out to his own satisfaction.  He requested, therefore, that his host would let him hear what he desired to know.

Barto Rizzo’s forefinger was pressed from an angle into one temple.  His head inclined to meet it:  so that it was like the support to a broad blunt pillar.  The cropped head was flat as an owl’s; the chest of immense breadth; the bulgy knees and big hands were those of a dwarf athlete.  Strong colour, lying full on him from the neck to the forehead, made the big veins purple and the eyes fierier than the movements of his mind would have indicated.  He was simply studying the character of his man.  Luigi feared him; he was troubled chiefly because he was unaware of what Barto Rizzo wanted to know, and could not consequently tell what to bring to the market.  The simplicity of the questions put to him was bewildering:  he fell into the trap.  Barto’s eyes began to get terribly oblique.  Jingling money in his pocket, he said:—­

“You saw Colonel Corte on the Motterone:  you saw the Signor Agostino Balderini:  good men, both!  Also young Count Ammiani:  I served his father, the General, and jogged the lad on my knee.  You saw the Signorina Vittoria.  The English people came, and you heard them talk, but did not understand.  You came home and told all this to the Signor Antonio, your employer number one.  You have told the same to me, your employer number two.  There’s your pay.”

Barto summed up thus the information he had received, and handed Luigi six gold pieces.  The latter, springing with boyish thankfulness and pride at the easy earning of them, threw in a few additional facts, as, that he had been taken for a spy by the conspirators, and had heard one of the Englishmen mention the Signorina Vittoria’s English name.  Barto Rizzo lifted his eyebrows queerly.  “We’ll go through another interrogatory in an hour,” he said; “stop here till I return.”