'She must not,' said Agostino imperiously.

'She does.'

'I must stop that.' Agostino jumped out of bed.

The young men beset him with entreaties to leave the option to her.

'Fools!' he cried, plunging a rageing leg into his garments. 'Here,
Iris! Mercury! fly to Jupiter and say we are all old men and boys in
Italy, and are ready to accept a few middleaged mortals as Gods, if they
will come and help us. Young fools! Do you know that when you conspire
you are in harness, and yoke-fellows, every one?'

'Yoked to that Barto Rizzo!'

'Yes; and the worse horse of the two. Listen, you pair of Nuremberg
puppet-heads! If the Chief were here, I would lie still in my bed.
Medole has stopped the outbreak. Right or wrong, he moves a mass;
we are subordinates--particles. The Chief can't be everywhere. Milan
is too hot for him. Two men are here, concealed--Rinaldo and Angelo
Guidascarpi. The rumour springs from that. They have slain Count Paul
Lenkenstein, and rushed to old Milan for work, with the blood on their
swords. Oh, the tragedy!--when I have time to write it. Let me now go
to my girl, to my daughter! The blood of the Lenkenstein must rust on
the steel. Angelo slew him: Rinaldo gave him the cross to kiss. You
shall have the whole story by-and-by; but this will be a lesson to
Germans not to court our Italian damsels. Lift not that curtain, you
Pannonian burglars! Much do we pardon; but bow and viol meet not, save