mistaken for a Bolognese. He beckoned to the waiter, and said,
'Tell me what place has bred those two fellows on the other side of the
fountain.' After a side-glance of scrutiny, the reply was, 'Neapolitans.'
The waiter was ready to make an additional remark, but Ammiani nodded and
communed with a toothpick. He was sure that those Neapolitans were
recruits of the Bolognese Polizia; on the track of the Guidascarpi,
possibly. As he was not unlike Angelo Guidascarpi in figure, he became
uneasy lest they should blunder 'twixt him and La Scala; and the notion
of any human power stopping him short of that destination, made Ammiani's
hand perfectly firm. He drew on his gloves, and named the place whither
he was going, aloud. 'Excellency,' said the waiter, while taking up and
pretending to reckon the money for the bill: 'they have asked me whether
there are two Counts Ammiani in Milan.' Carlo's eyebrows started. 'Can
they be after me?' he thought, and said: 'Certainly; there is twice
anything in this world, and Milan is the epitome of it.'

Acting a part gave him Agostino's catching manner of speech. The waiter,
who knew him now, took this for an order to say 'Yes.' He had evidently a
respect for Ammiani's name: Carlo supposed that he was one of Milan's
fighting men. A sort of answer leading to 'Yes' by a circuit and the
assistance of the hearer, was conveyed to the, sbirri. They were true
Neapolitans quick to suspect, irresolute upon their suspicions. He was
soon aware that they were not to be feared more than are the general race
of bunglers, whom the Gods sometimes strangely favour. They perplexed
him: for why were they after him? and what had made them ask whether he
had a brother? He was followed, but not molested, on his way to La Scala.

Ammiani's heart was in full play as he looked at the curtain of the
stage. The Night of the Fifteenth had come. For the first few moments his
strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of hearts
thumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, together
with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events,
stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was
nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety,
jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements;
threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like
an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and n