through the medium of your own ambassador."

"Our own ambassador is no very warm friend of mine; and the rank would be
no clew, for it is clear that my kinsman has never assumed it since he
quitted his country."

"He quitted it, I understand, not exactly from choice," said Randal,
smiling. "Pardon my freedom and curiosity, but will you explain to me
a little more than I learn from English rumour (which never accurately
reports upon foreign matters still more notorious), how a person who had
so much to lose, and so little to win, by revolution, could put himself
into the same crazy boat with a crew of hair-brained adventurers and
visionary professors."

"Professors!" repeated the count; "I think you have hit on the very
answer to your question; not but what men of high birth were as mad as
the /canaille/. I am the more willing to gratify your curiosity, since
it will perhaps serve to guide your kind search in my favour. You must
know, then, that my kinsman was not born the heir to the rank he
obtained. He was but a distant relation to the head of the House which
he afterwards represented. Brought up in an Italian university, he was
distinguished for his learning and his eccentricities. There too, I
suppose, brooding over old wives' tales about freedom, and so forth, he
contracted his carbonaro, chimerical notions for the independence of
Italy. Suddenly, by three deaths, he was elevated, while yet young, to
a station and honours which might have satisfied any man in his senses.
/Que diable!/ what could the independence of Italy do for him? He and I
were cousins; we had played together as boys; but our lives had been
separated till his succession to rank brought us necessarily together.
We became exceedingly intimate. And you may judge how I loved him," said