the bill: 'they have asked me whether there are two Counts Ammiani in
Milan.' Carlo's eyebrows started. 'Can they be after me?' he thought,
and said: 'Certainly; there is twice anything in this world, and Milan is
the epitome of it.'

Acting a part gave him Agostino's catching manner of speech. The waiter,
who knew him now, took this for an order to say 'Yes.' He had evidently a
respect for Ammiani's name: Carlo supposed that he was one of Milan's
fighting men. A sort of answer leading to 'Yes' by a circuit and the
assistance of the hearer, was conveyed to the, sbirri. They were true
Neapolitans quick to suspect, irresolute upon their suspicions. He was
soon aware that they were not to be feared more than are the general race
of bunglers, whom the Gods sometimes strangely favour. They perplexed
him: for why were they after him? and what had made them ask whether he
had a brother? He was followed, but not molested, on his way to La
Scala.

Ammiani's heart was in full play as he looked at the curtain of the
stage. The Night of the Fifteenth had come. For the first few moments
his strong excitement fronting the curtain, amid a great host of hearts
thumping and quivering up in the smaller measures like his own, together
with the predisposing belief that this was to be a night of events,
stopped his consciousness that all had been thwarted; that there was
nothing but plot, plot, counterplot and tangle, disunion, silly subtlety,
jealousy, vanity, a direful congregation of antagonistic elements;
threads all loose, tongues wagging, pressure here, pressure there, like
an uncertain rage in the entrails of the undirected earth, and no master
hand on the spot to fuse and point the intense distracted forces.

The curtain, therefore, hung like any common opera-screen; big only with