h regard to various suspicious characters, and the police
prepared to act at a moment's notice.

It was an hour after midnight when the Council met; and the Duke sat,
pale, agitated, and terrified, at the table, with Landelli, the Prime
Minister, Caprini, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and General
Ferrucio, the War Minister; a venerable ecclesiastic, Monsignore Abbati,
occupying the lowest place, in virtue of his humble station as confessor
of his Highness. He who of all others enjoyed his master's confidence,
and whose ready intelligence was most needed in the emergency, was not
present; his title of Minister of the Household not qualifying him for a
place at the Council.

Whatever the result, the deliberation was a long one. Even while it
continued, there was time to despatch a courier to Carrara, and receive
the answer he brought back; and when the Duke returned to his room,
it was already far advanced in the morning. Fatigued and harassed, he
dismissed his valet at once, and desired that Stubber might attend him.
When he arrived, however, his Highness had fallen off asleep, and lay,
dressed as he was, on his bed.

Stubber sat noiselessly beside his master, his mind deeply pondering
over the events which, although he had not been present at the Council,
had all been related to him. It was not the first time he had heard of
that formidable conspiracy, which, under the title of the Carbonari, had
established themselves in every corner of Europe.

In the days of his humbler fortune he had known several of them
intimately; he had been often solicited to join their band; but
while steadily refusing this, he had detected much which to his keen
intelligence savored of treachery to the cause amongst them. This cause
was necessarily recruited from those whose lives rejected all honest and
patient labor. They were the disappointed men of every station, from
the highest to the lowest. The ruined gentleman, the beggared noble, the
bankrupt trader, the houseless artisan, the homeless vagabond, were all
there; bold, daring, and energetic, fearless as to the present, reckless
as to the future. They sought for any change, no matter what, seeing
that in the convulsion their own condition must be bettered. Few
troubled their heads how these changes were to be accomplished; they
cared little for the real grievances they assumed to redress: their work
was demolition. It was to the hour of pillage alone they looked for the
recomp