’Now, is it not true that you have an idea of the country not being worthy of her?’ said Agostino, slyly.  ’The Chief, I fancy, did not take certain facts into his calculation when he pleaded that the conspiratrix was the sum and completion of the conspirator.  You will come to Medole’s to-night, Carlo.  You need not be too sweet to him, but beware of explosiveness.  I, a Republican, am nevertheless a practical exponent of the sacrifices necessary to unity.  I accept the local leadership of Medole—­on whom I can never look without thinking of an unfeathered pie; and I submit to be assisted by the man Barto Rizzo.  Do thou likewise, my son.  Let your enamoured sensations follow that duty, and with a breezy space between.  A conspiracy is an epitome of humanity, with a boiling power beneath it.  You’re no more than a bit of mechanism—­happy if it goes at all!’

Agostino said that he would pay a visit to Vittoria in the evening.  Ammiani had determined to hunt out Barto Rizzo and the heads of the Clubs before he saw her.  It was a relief to him to behold in the Piazza the Englishman who had exchanged cards with him on the Motterone.  Captain Gambier advanced upon a ceremonious bow, saying frankly, in a more colloquial French than he had employed at their first interview, that he had to apologize for his conduct, and to request monsieur’s excuse.  ‘If,’ he pursued, ’that lady is the person whom I knew formerly in England as Mademoiselle Belloni, and is now known as Mademoiselle Vittoria Campa, may I beg you to inform her that, according to what I have heard, she is likely to be in some danger to-morrow?’ What the exact nature of the danger was, Captain Gambier could not say.

Ammiani replied:  ‘She is in need of all her friends,’ and took the pressure of the Englishman’s hand, who would fair have asked more but for the stately courtesy of the Italian’s withdrawing salute.  Ammiani could no longer doubt that Vittoria’s implication in the conspiracy was known.

CHAPTER XI

LAURA PIAVENI

After dark on the same day antecedent to the outbreak, Vittoria, with her faithful Beppo at her heels, left her mother to run and pass one comforting hour in the society of the Signora Laura Piaveni and her children.

There were two daughters of a parasitical Italian nobleman, of whom one had married the patriot Giacomo Piaveni, and one an Austrian diplomatist, the Commendatore Graf von Lenkenstein.  Count Serabiglione was traditionally parasitical.  His ancestors all had moved in Courts.  The children of the House had illustrious sponsors.  The House itself was a symbolical sunflower constantly turning toward Royalty.  Great excuses are to be made for this, the last male descendant, whose father in his youth had been an Imperial page, and who had been nursed in the conception that Italy (or at least Lombardy) was a natural fief of Austria, allied by instinct and by interest to