"I"d not have seen him, Carlo. It was most unwise to have spoken with him."
"What would you have?" said the other, with a shrug of his shoulders.
"He came to set this clock to rights,--it plays some half-dozen airs from Mercadante and Verdi,--and he knows how to arrange them. He goes every morning to the Tuileries, to Moquard, the Emperor"s secretary: he, too, has an Italian musical clock, and he likes to chat with Baretti."
"I distrust these fellows greatly."
"That is so English!" said Caffarelli; "but we Italians have a finer instinct for knavery, just as we have a finer ear for music; and as we detect a false note, so we smell a treachery, where you John Bulls would neither suspect one or the other. Baretti sees the Prince Napoleon, too, almost every day, and with Pietri he is like a brother."
"But we can have no dealings with a fellow that harbors such designs."
"_Caro amico_, don"t you know by this time that no Italian of the cla.s.s of this fellow ever imagines any other disentanglement in a political question than by the stiletto? It is you, or I, or somebody else, must, as they phrase it, "pay with his skin." Fortunately for the world, there is more talk than action in all this; but if you were to oppose it, and say, "None of this," you "d only be the first victim. We put the knife in politics just as the Spanish put garlic in cookery: we don"t know any other seasoning, and it has always agreed with our digestion."
"Can Giacomo come in to wind up the clock, Eccellenza?" said Caffarelli"s servant, entering at the moment; and as the Count nodded an a.s.sent, a fat, large, bright-eyed man of about forty entered, with a mellow frank countenance, and an air of happy joyous contentment that might have sat admirably on a well-to-do farmer.
"Come over and have a gla.s.s of wine, Giacomo," said the Count, filling a large gla.s.s to the brim with Burgundy; and the Italian bowed with an air of easy politeness first to the Count and next to Maitland, and then, after slightly tasting the liquor, retired a little distance from the table, gla.s.s in hand.
"My friend here," said the Count, with a motion of his hand towards Maitland, "is one of ourselves, Giacomo, and you may speak freely before him."
"I have seen the n.o.ble signor before," said Giacomo, bowing respectfully, "at Naples, with His Royal Highness the Count of Syracuse."
"The fellow never forgets a face; n.o.body escapes him," muttered Caffarelli; while he added, aloud, "Well, there are few honester patriots in Italy than the Count of Syracuse."
Giacomo smiled, and showed a range of white teeth, with a pleasant air of acquiescence.
"And what is stirring?--what news have you for us, Giacomo?" asked Caffarelli.
"Nothing, Eccellenza,--positively nothing. The French seem rather to be growing tired of us Italians, and begin to ask, "What, in the name of wonder, do we really want?" and even his Majesty the Emperor t" other day said to one of ours, "Don"t be importunate.""
"And will you tell me that the Emperor would admit to his presence and speak with fellows banded in a plot against his life?" asked Maitland, contemptuously.
"Does the n.o.ble signor know that the Emperor was a Carbonaro once, and that he never forgets it? Does the n.o.ble signor know that there has not been one plot against his life--not one--of which he has not been duly apprised and warned?"
"If I understand you aright, Master Giacomo, then, it is that these alleged schemes of a.s.sa.s.sination are simply plots to deliver up to the Emperor the two or three amongst you who may be sincere in their blood thirstiness. Is that so?"
Far from seeming offended at the tone or the tenor of this speech, Giacomo smiled good-naturedly, and said, "I perceive that the n.o.ble signor is not well informed either as to our objects or our organization; nor does he appear to know, as your Excellency knows, that all secret societies have a certain common brotherhood."
"What! does he mean when opposed to each other?"
"He does, and he is right, Maitland. As bankers have their changing-houses, these fellows have their appointed places of meeting; and you might see a Jesuit in talk with a Garibaldian, and a wild revolutionist with one of the Pope"s household."
"The real pressure of these fellows," whispered the Count, still lower, "is menace! Menace it was brought about the war with Austria, and it remains to be seen if menace cannot undo its consequences. Killing a king is trying an unknown remedy; threatening to kill him is coercing his policy. And what are you about just now, Giacomo?" added he, louder.
"Little jobs here and there, signor, as I get them; but this morning, as I was mending a small organ at the Duc de Broglie"s, an agent of the police called to say I had better leave Paris."
"And when?"
"To-night, sir. I leave by the midnight mail for Lyons, and shall be in Turin by Sat.u.r.day."
"And will the authorities take his word, and suffer him to go his road without surveillance?" whispered Maitland.
"_Si, signor!_" interposed Giacomo, whose quick Italian ear had caught the question. "I won"t say that they"ll not telegraph down the whole line, and that at every station a due report will not be made of me; but I am prepared for that, and I take good care not even to ask a light for my cigar from any one who does not wear a French uniform."
"If I had authority here, Master Giacomo," said Maitland, "it"s not you, nor fellows like you, I "d set at liberty."
"And the n.o.ble signor would make a great mistake, that"s all."
"Why so?"
"It would be like destroying the telegraph wires because one received an unpleasant despatch," said Giacomo, with a grin.
"The fellow avows, then, that he is a spy, and betrays his fellows,"
whispered Maitland.
"I "d be very sorry to tell him so, or hear you tell him so," whispered the Count, with a laugh.
"Well, Giacomo," added he, aloud, "I "ll not detain you longer. We shall probably be on t" other side of the Alps ourselves in a few days, and shall meet again. A pleasant journey and a safe one to you!" He adroitly slipped some napoleons into the man"s hand as he spoke. "_Tanti saluti_ to all our friends, Giacomo," said he, waving his hand in adieu; and Giacomo seized it and kissed it twice with an almost rapturous devotion, and withdrew.
"Well," cried Maitland, with an irritable vibration in his tone, "this is clear and clean beyond me. What can you or I have in common with a fellow of this stamp; or supposing that we could have anything, how should we trust him?"
"Do you imagine that the n.o.bles will ever sustain the monarchy, my dear Maitland; or in what country have you ever found that the highest in cla.s.s were freest of their blood? It is Giacomo, and the men like him, who defend kings to-day that they may menace them to-morrow. These fellows know well that with what is called a const.i.tutional government and a parliament the king"s life signifies next to nothing, and their own trade is worthless. They might as well shoot a President of the Court of Ca.s.sation! Besides, if we do not treat with these men, the others will. Take my word for it, our king is wiser than either of us, and he never despised the Caraorra. But I know what you "re afraid of, Maitland," said he, laughing,--"what you and all your countrymen tremble before,--that precious thing you call public opinion, and your "Times"
newspaper! There"s the whole of it. To be arraigned as a regicide, and called the companion of this, that, or t" other creature, who was or ought to have been guillotined, is too great a shock for your Anglican respectability; and really I had fancied you were Italian enough to take a different view of this."
Maitland leaned his head on his hand, and seemed to muse for some minutes. "Do you know, Carlo," said he, at last, "I don"t think I "m made for this sort of thing. This fraternizing with scoundrels--for scoundrels they are--is a rude lesson. This waiting for the _mot d"ordre_ from a set of fellows who work in the dark is not to my humor.
I had hoped for a fair stand-up fight, where the best man should win; and what do we see before us? Not the cause of a throne defended by the men who are loyal to their king, but a vast lottery, out of which any adventurer is to draw the prize. So far as I can see it, we are to go into a revolution to secure a monarchy."
Caffarelli leaned across the table and filled Maitland"s gla.s.s to the brim, and then replenished his own.
"_Caro mio_," said he, coaxingly, "don"t brood and despond in this fashion, but tell me about this charming Irish beauty. Is she a brunette?"
"No; fair as a lily, but not like the blond damsels you have so often seen, with a certain timidity of look that tells of weak and uncertain purpose. She might by her air and beauty be a queen."
"And her name?"
"Alice--Alicia, some call it."
"Alice is better. And how came she to be a widow so very young? What is her story?"
"I know nothing of it; how should I? I could tell nothing of my own,"
said Maitland, sternly.
"Rich as well as beautiful,--what a prize, Maitland! I can scarcely imagine why you hesitate about securing it."
Maitland gave a scornful laugh, and with a voice of bitterness said: "Certainly my pretensions are great. I have fortune--station-- family--name--and rank to offer her. Can you not remind me, Carlo, of some other of my immense advantages?"
"I know this much," said the other, doggedly, "that I never saw you fail in anything you ever attempted."
"I had the trick of success once," said Maitland, sorrowfully, "but I seem to have lost it. But, after all, what would success do for me here, but stamp me as an adventurer?"