gaiety, but his stiff glance encountered no enemy.  This astonished him.  He turned back into the street and meditated.  The Pope’s Mouth might, he thought, hold the key to the riddle.  It is not always most comfortable for a conspirator to find himself unsuspected:  he reads the blank significantly.  It looked ill that the authorities should allow anything whatsoever to be printed on such a morrow:  especially ill, if they were on the alert.  The neighbourhood by the Pope’s Mouth was desolate under dark starlight.  Ammiani got his fingers into the opening behind the rubbish of brick, and tore them on six teeth of a saw that had been fixed therein.  Those teeth were as voluble to him as loud tongues.  The Mouth was empty of any shred of paper.  They meant that the enemy was ready to bite, and that the conspiracy had ceased to be active.  He perceived that a stripped ivy-twig, with the leaves scattered around it, stretched at his feet.  That was another and corroborative sign, clearer to him than printed capitals.  The reading of it declared that the Revolt had collapsed.  He wound and unwound his handkerchief about his fingers mechanically:  great curses were in his throat.  ’I would start for South America at dawn, but for her!’ he said.  The country of Bolivar still had its attractions for Italian youth.  For a certain space Ammiani’s soul was black with passion.  He was the son of that fiery Paolo Ammiani who had cast his glove at Eugene’s feet, and bade the viceroy deliver it to his French master. (The General was preparing to break his sword on his knee when Eugene rushed up to him and kissed him.) Carlo was of this blood.  Englishmen will hardly forgive him for having tears in his eyes, but Italians follow the Greek classical prescription for the emotions, while we take example by the Roman.  There is no sneer due from us.  He sobbed.  It seemed that a country was lost.

Ammiani had moved away slowly:  he was accidentally the witness of a curious scene.  There came into the irregular triangle, and walking up to where the fruitstalls stood by day, a woman and a man.  The man was an Austrian soldier.  It was an Italian woman by his side.  The sight of the couple was just then like an incestuous horror to Ammiani.  She led the soldier straight up to the Mouth, directing his hand to it, and, what was far more wonderful, directing it so that he drew forth a packet of papers from where Ammiani had found none.  Ammiani could see the light of them in his hand.  The Austrian snatched an embrace and ran.  Ammiani was moving over to her to seize and denounce the traitress, when he beheld another figure like an apparition by her side; but this one was not a whitecoat.  Had it risen from the earth?  It was earthy, for a cloud of dust was about it, and the woman gave a stifled scream.  ‘Barto!  Barto!’ she cried, pressing upon her eyelids.  A strong husky laugh came from him.  He tapped her shoulder heartily, and his ‘Ha! ha!’ rang in the night air.