undering devices. See, here is one of them, printed on the very paper
supplied to the Government offices. There 's he water-mark, with the
crown and your own cipher on it."

"_Per Bacco!_so it is. Let me show this to Landelli."

"Wait awhile, your Highness; let us trace this a little farther. No
arrests have been made?"

"None."

"Nor will any. The object in view is already gained; they have terrified
you, and secured the next move."

"What do you mean?"

"Simply, that they have persuaded you that this state is the hotbed
of revolutionists; that your own means of security and repression are
unequal to the emergency; that disaffection exists in the army; and
that, whether for the maintenance of the Government or your safety, you
have only one course remaining."

"Which is--"

"To call in the Austrians."

"_Per Bacco!_ it is exactly what they have advised. How did you come to
know it? Who is the traitor at the Council-board?"

"I wish I could tell you the name of one who was not such. Why, your
Highness, these fellows are not _your_ Ministers, except in so far as
they are paid by you. They are Metternich's people; they receive their
appointments from Vienna, and are only accountable to the cabinet held
at Schoenbrunn. If wise and moderate counsels prevailed here, if our
financial measures prospered, if the people were happy and contented,
how long, think you, would Lombardy submit to be ruled by the rod and
the bayonet? Do you imagine that _you_ will be suffered to give an
example to the Peninsula of a good administration?"

"But so it is," broke in the Prince; "I defy any man to assert the
opposite. The country _is_ prosperous, the people _are_ contented, the
laws justly administered, and, I hesitate not to say, myself as popular
as any sovereign of Europe."

"And I tell your Highness, just as distinctly, that the country is
ground down with taxation, even to export duties on the few things
we have to export; that the people are poor to the very verge of
starvation; that if they do not take to the highways as brigands, it is
because some traditions as honest men yet survive amongst them; that the
laws only exist as an agent of tyranny, arrest and imprisonment being
at the mere caprice of the authorities. Nor is there a means by which an
innocent man can demand his trial, and insist on being confronted with
his accuser. Your jails are full, crowded to a state of pestilence with
supposed political offenders