Agostino’s transfigurement from lymphatic poet to fiery man of action, lasted till his breath was short, when the necessity for taking a deep draught of air induced him to fall back upon his idle irony.  ’Heads, you illustrious young gentlemen!—­heads, not legs and arms, move a conspiracy.  Now, you—­think what you will of it—­are only legs and arms in this business.  And if you are insubordinate, you present the shocking fabular spirit of the members of the body in revolt; which is not the revolt we desire to see.  I go to my daughter immediately, and we shall all have a fat sleep for a week, while the Tedeschi hunt and stew and exhaust their naughty suspicions.  Do you know that the Pope’s Mouth is closed?  We made it tell a big lie before it shut tight on its teeth—­a bad omen, I admit; but the idea was rapturously neat.  Barto, the sinner —­be sure I throttle him for putting that blot on my swan; only, not yet, not yet:  he’s a blind mole, a mad patriot; but, as I say, our beast Barto drew an Austrian to the Mouth last night, and led the dog to take a letter out of it, detailing the whole plot of tonight, and how men will be stationed at the vicolo here, ready to burst out on the Corso, and at the vicolo there, and elsewhere, all over the city, carrying fire and sword; a systematic map of the plot.  It was addressed to Count Serabiglione—­my boys! my boys! what do you think of it?  Bravo! though Barto is a deadly beast if he—­’Agostino paused.  ’Yes, he went too far! too far!’

‘Has he only gone too far, do you say?’

Carlo spoke sternly.  His elder was provoked enough by his deadness of enthusiasm, and that the boy should dare to stalk on a bare egoistical lover’s sentiment to be critical of him, Agostino, struck him as monstrous.  With the treachery of controlled rage, Agostino drew near him, and whispered some sentences in his ear.

Agostino then called him his good Spartan boy for keeping brave countenance.  ’Wait till you comprehend women philosophically.  All’s trouble with them till then.  At La Scala tonight, my sons!  We have rehearsed the fiasco; the Tedeschi perform it.  Off with you, that I may go out alone!’

He seemed to think it an indubitable matter that he would find Vittoria and bend her will.

Agostino had betrayed his weakness to the young men, who read him with the keen eyes of a particular disapprobation.  He delighted in the dark web of intrigue, and believed himself to be no ordinary weaver of that sunless work.  It captured his imagination, filling his pride with a mounting gas.  Thus he had become allied to Medole on the one hand, and to Barto Rizzo on the other.  The young men read him shrewdly, but speaking was useless.

Before Carlo parted from Luciano, he told him the burden of the whisper, which had confirmed what he had heard on the Piazzi d’Armi.  It was this:  Barto Rizzo, aware that Lieutenant Pierson was the bearer of despatches from the Archduke in Milan to the marshal, then in Verona, had followed, and by extraordinary effort reached Verona in advance; had there tricked and waylaid him, and obtained, instead of despatches, a letter of recent date, addressed to him by Vittoria, which compromised the insurrectionary project.