robably rise at the same hour if I voted
against it. Reform is bound to come, whether your Dukes and Princes are
for it or against it; and those that grant constitutions instead of
refusing them are like men who tie a string to their hats before going
out in a gale. The string may hold for a while--but if it blows hard
enough the hats will all come off in the end."

"Ay, ay; and meanwhile we furnish the string from our own pockets," said
the scribe with a chuckle.

The shabby man grinned. "It won't be the last thing to come out of your
pockets," said he, turning to push his way toward another table.

The others rose and called for their reckoning; and the listener on the
cask slipped out of his corner, elbowed a passage to the door and
stepped forth into the square.

It was after midnight, a thin drizzle was falling, and the crowd had
scattered. The rain was beginning to extinguish the paper lanterns and
the torches, and the canvas sides of the tents flapped dismally, like
wet sheets on a clothes-line. The man drew his cloak closer, and
avoiding the stragglers who crossed his path, turned into the first
street that led to the palace. He walked fast over the slippery
cobble-stones, buffeted by a rising wind and threading his way between
dark walls and sleeping house-fronts till he reached the lane below the
ducal gardens. He unlocked the door by which he had come forth, entered
the gardens, and paused a moment on the terrace above the lane.

Behind him rose the palace, a dark irregular bulk, with a lighted window
showing here and there. Before him lay the city, an indistinguishable
huddle of roofs and towers under the rainy night. He stood awhile gazing
out over it; then he turned and walked toward the palace. The garden
alleys were deserted, the pleached walks dark as subterranean passages,
with the wet gleam of statues starting spectrally out of the blackness.
The man walked rapidly, leaving the Borromini wing on his left, and
skirting the outstanding mass of the older buildings. Behind the marble
buttresses of the chapel, he crossed the dense obscurity of a court
between high walls, found a door under an archway, turned a key in the
lock, and gained a spiral stairway as dark as the court. He groped his
way up the stairs and paused a moment on the landing to listen. Then he
opened another door, lifted a heavy hanging of tapestry, and stepped
into the Duke's closet. It stood empty, with a lamp burning low on the
de