You may fancy how I answered my own questions....If Briga had been false and cowardly then, was he not sure to be false and cowardly still?  In those days there were traitors under every coat, and more than one brave fellow had been sold to the police by his best friend....You will say that Briga’s record was unblemished, that he had exposed himself to danger too frequently, had stood by his friends too steadfastly, to permit of a rational doubt of his good faith.  So reason might have told me in a calmer moment, but she was not allowed to make herself heard just then.  I was young, I was angry, I chose to think I had been unfairly treated, and perhaps at my rival’s instigation.  It was not unlikely that Briga knew of my love for Donna Candida, and had encouraged her to use it in the good cause.  Was she not always at his bidding?  My blood boiled at the thought, and reaching Milan in a rage I went straight to Donna Candida.

I had measured the exact force of the blow I was going to deal.  The triumph of the liberals in Modena had revived public interest in the unsuccessful struggle of their predecessors, the men who, sixteen years earlier, had paid for the same attempt with their lives.  The victors of ’forty-eight wished to honor the vanquished of ’thirty-two.  All the families exiled by the ducal government were hastening back to recover possession of their confiscated property and of the graves of their dead.  Already it had been decided to raise a monument to Menotti and his companions.  There were to be speeches, garlands, a public holiday:  the thrill of the commemoration would run through Europe.  You see what it would have meant to the poor Countess to appear on the scene with her boy’s letter in her hand; and you see also what the memorandum on the back of the letter would have meant to Donna Candida.  Poor Emilio’s farewell would be published in all the journals of Europe:  the finding of the letter would be on every one’s lips.  And how conceal those fatal words on the back?  At the moment, it seemed to me that fortune could not have given me a handsomer chance of destroying my rival than in letting me find the letter which he stood convicted of having suppressed.

My sentiment was perhaps not a strictly honorable one; yet what could I do but give the letter to Donna Candida?  To keep it back was out of the question; and with the best will in the world I could not have erased Briga’s name from the back.  The mistake I made was in thinking it lucky that the paper had fallen into my hands.

Donna Candida was alone when I entered.  We had parted in anger, but she held out her hand with a smile of pardon, and asked what news I brought from Modena.  The smile exasperated me:  I felt as though she were trying to get me into her power again.

“I bring you a letter from your brother,” I said, and handed it to her.  I had purposely turned the superscription downward, so that she should not see it.