Corte stamped his loose feet to earth, shook him and told him to walk aloft.  The flexible voluble fellow had evidently become miserably disconcerted.  He walked in trepidation, speechless, and when interrogated on the height his eyes flew across the angry visages with dismal uncertainty.  Agostino perceived that he had undoubtedly not expected to come among them, and forthwith began to excite Giulio and Marco to the worst suspicions, in order to indulge his royal poetic soul with a study of a timorous wretch pushed to anticipations of extremity.

“The execution of a spy,” he preluded, “is the signal for the ringing of joy-bells on this earth; not only because he is one of a pestiferous excess, in point of numbers, but that he is no true son of earth.  He escaped out of hell’s doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to puff out a bad light, and send him back.  Look at this fellow in whom conscience is operating so that he appears like a corked volcano!  You can see that he takes Austrian money; his skin has got to be the exact colour of Munz.  He has the greenish-yellow eyes of those elective, thrice-abhorred vampyres who feed on patriot-blood.  He is condemned without trial by his villainous countenance, like an ungrammatical preface to a book.  His tongue refuses to confess, but nature is stronger:—­observe his knees.  Now this is guilt.  It is execrable guilt.  He is a nasty object.  Nature has in her wisdom shortened his stature to indicate that it is left to us to shorten the growth of his offending years.  Now, you dangling soul! answer me:—­what name hailed you when on earth?”

The fan, with no clearly serviceable tongue, articulated, “Luigi.”

“Luigi! the name Christian and distinctive.  The name historic:-Luigi Porco?”

“Luigi Saracco, signore.”

“Saracco:  Saracco:  very possibly a strip of the posterity of cut-throat Moors.  To judge by your face, a Moor undoubtedly:  glib, slippery! with a body that slides and a soul that jumps.  Taken altogether, more serpent than eagle.  I misdoubt that little quick cornering eye of yours.  Do you ever remember to have blushed?”

“No, signore,” said Luigi.

“You spy upon the signorina, do you?”

“You have Beppo’s word for that,” interposed Marco Sana, growling.

“And you are found spying on the mountain this particular day!  Luigi Saracco, you are a fellow of a tremendous composition.  A goose walking into a den of foxes is alone to be compared to you,—­if ever such goose was!  How many of us did you count, now, when you were, say, a quarter of a mile below?”

Marco interposed again:  “He has already seen enough up here to make a rope of florins.”

“The fellow’s eye takes likenesses,” said Giulio.

Agostino’s question was repeated by Corte, and so sternly that Luigi, beholding kindness upon no other face save Vittoria’s, watched her, and muttering “Six,” blinked his keen black eyes piteously to get her sign of assent to his hesitated naming of that number.  Her mouth and the turn of her head were expressive to him, and he cried “Seven.”