countenance. 'Wait till you comprehend women philosophically. All's
trouble with them till then. At La Scala tonight, my sons! We have
rehearsed the fiasco; the Tedeschi perform it. Off with you, that I may
go out alone!'

He seemed to think it an indubitable matter that he would find Vittoria
and bend her will.

Agostino had betrayed his weakness to the young men, who read him with
the keen eyes of a particular disapprobation. He delighted in the dark
web of intrigue, and believed himself to be no ordinary weaver of that
sunless work. It captured his imagination, filling his pride with a
mounting gas. Thus he had become allied to Medole on the one hand, and
to Barto Rizzo on the other. The young men read him shrewdly, but
speaking was useless.

Before Carlo parted from Luciano, he told him the burden of the whisper,
which had confirmed what he had heard on the Piazzi d'Armi. It was this:
Barto Rizzo, aware that Lieutenant Pierson was the bearer of despatches
from the Archduke in Milan to the marshal, then in Verona, had followed,
and by extraordinary effort reached Verona in advance; had there tricked
and waylaid him, and obtained, instead of despatches, a letter of recent
date, addressed to him by Vittoria, which compromised the insurrectionary
project.

'If that's the case, my Carlo!' said his friend, and shrugged, and spoke
in a very worldly fashion of the fair sex.

Carlo shook him off. For the rest of the day he was alone, shut up with
his journalistic pen. The pen traversed seas and continents like an old