cess and her brother in that brief
interview Celio did not know. Each passed from it calmed and cheerful.
There was a kindlier look in the Emperor's face, a more assured
elasticity in his step as the English sailors who transported him to his
exile shouted their, "Better luck next time"; and sparks were lighted in
the eyes of the Princess which every one who saw her noted, though
none guessed what hidden fires of resolve fed their flashes.

[Illustration: _Alinari_

Fountain in Gardens of the Villa Borghese]

They called her that season the Firefly, and many misinterpreted her
illy suppressed excitement and the scrutiny of those lambent eyes
sending out their flame signals in search of answering lights. Even her
secretary did not know that the dark shadows which ringed them were not
due to the balls and other frivolities in which she was so conspicuous;
but to complicated and dangerous schemes which robbed her of sleep at
night, and were never forgotten as she danced and chatted and coquetted
while the most astute diplomats laid their hearts and their secrets at
her feet.

She received strange visitors too at the magnificent Villa Borghese,
just outside the Porta del Popolo, wild-eyed agitators and suspects who
had never before been permitted to enter those aristocratic gates. The
first had come disguised in a marble-cutter's blouse as an assistant of
Canova; but he had dropped a word which the noble model understood, and
the fire signals had flashed between them. After the sculptor had left
the casino his assistant tarried, and Celio, dismissed by his mistress
but lingering at the threshold, heard fragments of the man's talk:
"Liberty, united Italy, and death to the Austrians."

Later, when he attempted to warn the Princess that if the man were not a
maniac he was more dangerous, she asked him bluntly if her husband had
constituted him her dragon, and thereafter in half contemptuous banter
she gave him the nickname of "Mondragone."

It was the name also of another villa belonging to the Borghese, the
most sightly of all the boldly seated summer resorts of the nobility at
beautiful Frascati. Not one of these commands a view comparable to the
one from its terrace of the Pope's Chimneys, so named from the strange
monumental constructions which are so conspicuous that, with a glass,
they are plainly visible from Rome.

So when the Princess announced, "I love Mondragone," her secretary did
not flatter himself that t