with Del
Ferice.

Del Ferice was a man who was suspected of revolutionary sympathies by the
authorities in Rome, but who was not feared. He was therefore allowed to
live his life much as he pleased, though he was conscious from time to
time that he was watched. Being a man, however, who under all
circumstances pursued his own interests with more attention than he
bestowed on those of any party, he did not pretend to attach any
importance to the distinction of being occasionally followed by a spy, as
a more foolish man might have done. If he was watched, he did not care to
exhibit himself to his friends as a martyr, to tell stories of the
_sbirro_ who sometimes dogged his footsteps, nor to cry aloud that he was
unjustly persecuted. He affected a character above suspicion, and rarely
allowed himself to express an opinion. He was no propagator of new
doctrines; that was too dangerous a trade for one of his temper. But he
foresaw changes to come, and he determined that he would profit by them.
He had little to lose, but he had everything to gain; and being a patient
man, he resolved to gain all he could by circumspection--in other words,
by acting according to his nature, rather than by risking himself in a
bold course of action for which he was wholly unsuited. He was too wise
to attempt wholly to deceive the authorities, knowing well that they were
not easily deceived; and he accordingly steered a middle course,
constantly speaking in favour of progress, of popular education, and of
freedom of the press, but at the same time loudly proclaiming that all
these things--that every benefit of civilisation, in fact--could be
obtained without the slightest change in the form of government. He thus
asserted his loyalty to the temporal power while affecting a belief in
the possibility of useful reforms, and the position he thus acquired
exactly suited his own ends; for he attracted to himself a certain amount
of suspicion on account of his progressist professions, and then disarmed
that suspicion by exhibiting a serene indifference to the espionage of
which he was the object. The consequence was, that at the very time when
he was most deeply implicated in much more serious matters--of which the
object was invariably his own ultimate profit--at the time when he was
receiving money for information he was able to obtain through his social
position, he was regarded by the authorities, and by most of his
acquaintances, as a harmless m