was spoiling them.

'You know my opinion,' Ammiani said to the count. 'I told you last night,
and I tell you again to-day, that Barto Rizzo is guilty of gross
misconduct, and that you must plead the same to a sort of excuseable
treason. Count Medole, you cannot wind and unwind a conspiracy like a
watch. Who is the head of this one? It is the man Barto Rizzo. He took
proceedings before he got you to sanction them. You may be the vessel,
but he commands, or at least, he steers it.'

The count waited undemonstratively until Ammiani had come to an end. 'You
speak, my good Ammiani, with an energy that does you credit,' he said,
'considering that it is not in your own interest, but another person's.
Remember, I can bear to have such a word as treason ascribed to my acts.'

Fresh visitors, more or less mixed, in the conspiracy, and generally
willing to leave the management of it to Count Medole, now entered the
saloon. These were Count Rasati, Angelo Dovili, a Piedmontese General, a
Tuscan duke, and one or two aristocratic notabilities and historic
nobodies. They were hostile to the Chief whom Luciano and Carlo revered
and obeyed. The former lit a cigarette, and saying to his friend, 'Do you
breakfast with your mother? I will come too,' slipped his hand on
Ammiani's arm; they walked out indolently together, with the smallest
shade of an appearance of tolerating scorn for those whom they left
behind.

'Medole has money and rank and influence, and a kind of I-don't-know-what
womanishness, that makes him push like a needle for the lead, and he will
have the lead and when he has got the lead, there 's the last chapter of
him,' said Luciano. 'His point of ambition is the perch of the
weather-cock. Why did he set upon you, my Carlo? I saw the big V running
up your forehead when you faced him. If you had finished him no great
harm would have been done.'

'I saw him for a short time last night, and spoke to him in my father's
style,' said Carlo. 'The reason was, that he defended Barto Rizzo for
putting the ring about the Signorina Vittoria's name, and causing the
black butterfly to be pinned to her dress.'

Luciano's brows stood up.

'If she sings to-night, depend upon it there will be a disturbance,' he
said. 'There may be a rising in spite of Medole and such poor sparks,
who're afraid to drop on powder, and twirl and dance till the wind blows
them out. And mind, the chance rising is commonly the luckiest. If I get
a command