he having confessed to the existence of a plot in the city.  Pericles came fuming to Wilfrid’s quarters.  Wilfrid gathered from him that Sarpo’s general confession had been retracted:  it was too foolish to snare the credulity of Austrian officials.  Sarpo stated that he had fabricated the story of a plot, in order to escape the persecutions of a terrible man, and find safety in prison lodgings vender Government.  The short confinement for a civic offence was not his idea of safety; he desired to be sheltered by Austrian soldiers and a fortress, and said that his torments were insupportable while Barto Rizzo was at large.  This infamous Republican had latterly been living in his house, eating his bread, and threatening death to him unless he obeyed every command.  Sarpo had undertaken his last mission for the purpose of supplying his lack of resolution to release himself from his horrible servitude by any other means; not from personal animosity toward the Countess Alessandra Ammiani, known as la Vittoria.  When seized, fear had urged him to escape.  Such was his second story.  The points seemed irreconcilable to those who were not in the habit of taking human nature into their calculations of a possible course of conduct; even Wilfrid, though he was aware that Barto Rizzo hated Vittoria inveterately, imagined Sarpo’s first lie to have necessarily fathered a second.  But the second story was true:  and the something like lover’s wrath with which the outrage to Vittoria fired Pericles, prompted him to act on it as truth.  He told Wilfrid that he should summon Barto Rizzo to his presence.  As the Government was unable to exhibit so much power, Wilfrid looked sarcastic; whereupon Pericles threw up his chin crying:  “Oh! you shall know my resources.  Now, my friend, one bit of paper, and a messenger, and zen home to my house, to Tokay and cigarettes, and wait to see.”  He remarked after pencilling a few lines, “Countess d’Isorella is her enemy? hein!”

“Why, you wouldn’t listen to me when I told you,” said Wilfrid.

“No,” Pericles replied while writing and humming over his pencil; “my ear is a pelican-pouch, my friend; it—­and Irma is her enemy also?—­it takes and keeps, but does not swallow till it wants.  I shall hear you, and I shall hear my Sandra Vittoria, and I shall not know you have spoken, when by-and-by I tinkle, tinkle, a bell of my brain, and your word walks in,—­’quite well?’—­’very well! ’—­sit down’—­’if it is ze same to you, I prefer to stand’—­’good; zen I examine you.’  My motto:—­’Time opens ze gates:  my system:  ’it is your doctor of regiment’s system when your twelve, fifteen, forty recruits strip to him:—­’Ah! you, my man, have varicose vein:  no soldier in our regiment, you!’ So on.  Perhaps I am not intelligible; but, hear zis.  I speak not often of my money; but I say—­it is in your ear—­a man of millions, he is a king!” The Greek jumped up and folded a couple of notes.  “I will not have her disturbed.  Let her