an Barto Rizzo. He took
proceedings before he got you to sanction them. You may be the vessel,
but he commands, or at least, he steers it.'

The count waited undemonstratively until Ammiani had come to an end.
'You speak, my good Ammiani, with an energy that does you credit,' he
said, 'considering that it is not in your own interest, but another
person's. Remember, I can bear to have such a word as treason ascribed
to my acts.'

Fresh visitors, more or less mixed, in the conspiracy, and generally
willing to leave the management of it to Count Medole, now entered the
saloon. These were Count Rasati, Angelo Dovili, a Piedmontese General,
a Tuscan duke, and one or two aristocratic notabilities and historic
nobodies. They were hostile to the Chief whom Luciano and Carlo revered
and obeyed. The former lit a cigarette, and saying to his friend, 'Do
you breakfast with your mother? I will come too,' slipped his hand on
Ammiani's arm; they walked out indolently together, with the smallest
shade of an appearance of tolerating scorn for those whom they left
behind.

'Medole has money and rank and influence, and a kind of
I-don't-know-what womanishness, that makes him push like a needle for
the lead, and he will have the lead and when he has got the lead, there
's the last chapter of him,' said Luciano. 'His point of ambition is the
perch of the weather-cock. Why did he set upon you, my Carlo? I saw the
big V running up your forehead when you faced him. If you had finished
him no great harm would have been done.'

'I saw him for a short time last night, and spoke to him in my father's
style,' said Carlo. 'The reason was, that he defended Barto Rizzo for
putting the ring about the Signorina Vittoria's name, and causing the
black butterfly to be pinned to her dress.'

Luciano's brows stood up.

'If she sings to-night, depend upon it there will be a disturbance,' he
said. 'There may be a rising in spite of Medole and such poor sparks,
who're afraid to drop on powder, and twirl and dance till the wind blows
them out. And mind, the chance rising is commonly the luckiest. If I get
a command I march to the Alps. We must have the passes of the Tyrol. It
seems to me that whoever holds the Alps must ride the Lombard mare. You
spring booted and spurred into the saddle from the Alps.'

Carlo was hurt by his friend's indifference to the base injury done to
Vittoria.

'I have told Medole that she will sing to-night in spite of him,' he