heets of the little bed with his great ugly paws.
Luisa placed the child in it, and then the large bed was torn to pieces
and examined, but without any result. Maria had stopped crying, and was
staring at the scene of confusion with wide eyes.

"Now follow me, both of you," said the adjunct. Luisa, who believed she
was to be led away with her husband, demanded that the servant be
summoned, that she might give the child into her care. At the idea that
Luisa was under arrest, that the sick child was to be deprived of her
mother also, Franco, beside himself with rage and grief, uttered a
protesting cry--

"This is not possible! Say it is not so!"

The detective did not vouchsafe a reply, but ordered that the servant
be brought in. The maid, half dead with fright, entered between two
gendarmes, groaning and sobbing.

"Fool!" Franco muttered between his teeth.

"The woman will stay here with the child," said the adjunct. "Both of
you will come with me. You must be present when the rest of the house is
searched." He sent for some lights, left a gendarme in the alcove-room,
and went into the hall, followed by the other gendarmes, Bianconi,
Franco, and Luisa.

"Before continuing the search," said he, "I will ask you a question I
should have asked before had your conduct been more correct. Tell me
whether you have any weapons, or seditious publications, or papers
either printed or in manuscript, which are hostile to the Imperial and
Royal Government."

Franco answered, in a loud tone--

"No."

"That is what we shall see," said the detective.

"Do as you like."

While the adjunct was causing furniture to be moved away from the wall,
and was searching and peering everywhere, Luisa remembered that eight or
ten years before her uncle had shown her in the chest of drawers of a
room on the second floor, an old sabre that had lain there ever since
1812. It had belonged to another Pietro Ribera, a lieutenant of cavalry,
who had fallen at Malojaroslavetz. No one ever slept in that room above
the kitchen and it was seldom entered; it was as if it did not exist.
Luisa had completely forgotten the old sabre of the Empire. Oh, God! now
she recalled it! What if her uncle had forgotten it also? What if he had
not given it up in 1848, after the war, when orders had been issued to
deliver up all weapons, under pain of death? Had her uncle grasped the
fact, in his patriarchal simplicity, that this heir-loom that had lain
for six-an