Championnet let him finish his story without interruption, but when it came to an end without Salvato’s name being once mentioned, he began to be seriously anxious as to the fate of his envoy, and was going to question Garat on the subject when the door opened and an orderly announced that a man in peasant’s attire insisted on seeing the General. Behind him a louder voice exclaimed:

  “It is I, General. Hector Caraffa. I bring news of Salvato.”

  “Come in. Come in, Hector!” cried Championnet. “You are most welcome. I was just going to question the Ambassador.”

  Hector rushed in and embraced Championnet. “Ah!” he exclaimed, “how good it is to see you again!”

  “But what of Salvato? Hector, what news have you?”

  “Both bad and good. Good, because he ought to be dead and is still alive. Bad, because they got the letter he was taking to the Ambassador.”

  “Had he then a letter for me?” asked Garat. “And what was in it?”

  “This is most unfortunate,” said Championnet. “My letter was to tell you that we are utterly unfit to fight. We want men, money, food, munitions, every single thing we ought to have. I begged you to maintain peaceable relations as long as you possibly could. If my letter has fallen into the enemy’s hands it is a great misfortune, but it would be worse still if they killed Salvato. What really happened, Hector?”

  “They only missed killing him by a miracle. It seems he was waylaid, and six men set upon him. Well, you know Salvato! He killed two of them and wounded two more, and then the Queen’s cutthroat, Pasquale, the leader, flung his knife and planted it in Salvato’s chest up to the handle. Well, some people have luck! He fell into the arms of the most beautiful woman in Naples, who has hidden him from all eyes, even her husband’s.”

  “But the wound,” cried the General. “Is it mortal? Salvato is as a son to me.”

  “The wound is certainly serious, very serious, but-the best doctor in Naples, one of ourselves, is looking after him. But there are other things. The people are rising against our party. Cirillo was delayed two hours on his way to me by a crowd of lazzaroni, who burnt alive the two brothers della Torre in front of their house.”

  “The wretches!” exclaimed Championnet.

  “Then I hear there was a great council at the palace, and war against the Republic was decided on. I know that by Nicolino Caracciolo, who has a friend among the ladies-in-waiting. Austria supplies the general, who is Baron Charles Mack.”

  “That is not particularly alarming.”

  “No, but what is alarming is that England has put a finger in the pie, and provided money. There are 60,000 men ready to march on Rome in eight days if necessary. Well, I think that is all.”

  “It is enough, in all conscience!” remarked Championnet.

  “You see,” he continued, turning to Garat, “there is not a moment to lose. Luckily, two million cartridges arrived yesterday. Cannon there are none to speak of, but with two million cartridges and ten or twelve thousand bayonets behind them we can take the Neapolitan cannon and use them.”

  “I thought you had only nine thousand men?”

  “No more I have, but I hope for a reinforcement of three thousand. Can you get on to Milan, Hector?”

  “As soon as I have had some food and a change of clothes. I am dying of hunger, and, as you see, plastered with mud from head to foot. The roads are awful. I do not wonder that your orderlies objected to let me in.”

  Championnet rang, and his valet appeared.

  “Breakfast, a bath, and clothes for Citizen Caraffa.

  The bath in ten minutes, the clothes in twenty, breakfast in half-an-hour.”

  “But, General,” said the servant, “your clothes will not fit Citizen Caraffa; he is a head taller than you.”

  “Here,” said Garat, “take this key and open my portmanteau. The Count de Ruvo is about my size; you will find linen and a suit of clothes. As for the fit, well, it is war time!”

  “At Milan you will find Joubert. Are you listening, Hector? I am speaking to you. At Milan you will find Joubert. Tell him he must manage as he best can, but unless he sends me three thousand men Rome will be lost. He had better send Kellermann if he can; he is a first-rate cavalry man, and it is cavalry we want. You must guide them, Hector, and make for Civita Castellana; we shall probably meet there. I need hardly tell you to be quick about it.”

  “As I have just done seventy-two leagues of mountain road in forty-eight hours, it seems superfluous.”

  “Besides,” said Garat, “I can take Citizen Caraffa on to Milan. My carriage must arrive to-morrow.”

  “You will not wait for your travelling carriage, Ambassador; you will take mine. There is not a moment to lose. Macdonald, will you write in my name to all the outposts. They are on no account to resist, but once they know that the enemy has crossed the frontier, to fall back upon Civita Castellana.”

  “What!” cried Garat, “will you not even attempt to defend Rome?”

  “I shall abandon it, if I can, without firing a shot, but not for very long.”

  “Well, General, you know more of these things than I do.”

  “I? I know no more of war than you can learn from Macchiavelli.”

  “And what says Macchiavelli?”

  “Must I quote Macchiavelli to a diplomatist who ought to know him by heart? Well, he says

  Listen, Hector; and you, Macdonald. Macchiavelli says: ‘The whole secret of war lies in two things, in doing whatever the enemy did not expect you to do, and in allowing him to do whatever you expected him to do. By observing the first precept you ruin his calculations for defence, and by observing the second you upset his plans of attack.’ Read Macchiavelli, Garat, he was a really great man, and when you have read him.”

  “Well, what then?”

  “Read him all over again.” The door opened, and the valet re-appeared. “Here comes Scipio to say the bath is ready. While Macdonald writes his letters I will give Garat an account of all the plundering done here by the Directory’s agents, which he can repeat to the Directory in Paris. Then we will breakfast, and drink to our speedy entrance into Naples in the best wine in the Papal cellars.”

  CHAPTER IX.

  ANDREW BAKER.

  IT is ten o’clock in the morning, on the Quay of Mergellina, much crowded with fishermen, lazzaroni and humble folk of every kind who hasten, mingled with cooks from the great houses, towards the market. There, King Ferdinand, dressed as a fisherman, stands behind a table covered with fish, selling his catch himself; but we are more interested for the moment in old friend Michael the Fool, who, instead of keeping pace with the rest, stops at the little door into the garden already well-known to our readers. For at the garden door, leaning against the wall, gazing into the blue sky, or rather into her wandering thought, stands a young girl to whom her secondary position has not allowed us until this moment to give more than slight attention.

  It is Giovannina, generally shortened to Nina, Luisa San Felice’s own maid. Of a peasant type quite special to the neighbourhood of Naples; she is a girl aged between nineteen and twenty, of medium height, with a perfect figure, and to whom association with a lady has given refined tastes rare in her class. Her abundant, carefully-dressed hair is flame-like in its fiery fairness; her complexion a milky white studded with freckles; her eyes greenish, with golden irises and contracting pupils, as in cats; her thin, pale lips, becoming blood red at the slightest emotion, cover irreproachable teeth; and her veinless hands are white and cold as marble. Up to the present she has seemed much attached to her mistress, and beyond a slight frivolity has given her little cause for complaint.

  To Giovannina her inferiors and her equals have paid their court, but she has never responded to any of them; her ambition is to rise, and she has declared twenty times that she would prefer to remain single all her life than marry a man beneath her, or even in her own rank. Michael and Giovannina are old acquaintances; during the six years Giovannina has spent at Luisa’s they have had many opportunities of meeting, and Michael also, like other young men fascinated by the girl’s physical and moral oddity, has tried to make love to her; but she has explained to him without any circumlocution that she will never love anyone but a signor, even at the risk that the signor of her choice will not respond. Upon that, Michael, no platonist, has wished her every prosperity, and has turned to Assunta, who, having no aristocratic pretentions, is perfectly contented with him, and he, excellent young man, bearing no ill will to Giovannina, has asked and obtained the promise of her friendship.

  Thus, instead of going on his way to the royal market, Michael, seeing Giovannina so pensive at the garden door, stopped.

  “What are you gazing up into the sky for?” he asked.

  The young girl shrugged her shoulders: “I dream, as you see.”

  “Ah, like the great lady you hope to be.”

  Giovannina looked about her, and then said:

  “There is a good deal to be dreaming about. Are you as devoted to your foster-sister as I am to my mistress?”

  “Yes, indeed! For life and death! She can be sure of that.”

  “Well then, she will probably need you some day as she needs me already. What do you suppose I am doing at this door?”

  “Day-dreaming as you told me.”

  “Well, have you seen the Chevalier San Felice anywhere on the road?”

  “Yes, at the top of the Pie-di-Grotta.”

  “And I am here to see if he turns back as he did yesterday.”

  “What! He turned back? Does he suspect anything, then?”

  “He? Poor dear sir! He would likelier believe what he refused to the other day, that the earth is a piece of the sun knocked off by a comet, than to believe that his wife deceives him; besides, she doesn’t!.... or at least not yet: she is in love with Signor Salvato, that’s all; but all the same, if the chevalier were to ask for her I should be in a fix, for she is already with her invalid, whom she leaves neither night nor day.”

  “Ah, then she told you to come and make sure that the chevalier kept on his way to-day to the palace?”

  “Oh! no; thank God! Madame is not quite so far gone; but it will come to that, you’ll see. No, I saw her uneasy, coming and going, looking towards the corridor and towards the garden, dying to post herself at the window and not daring to. So I said: ‘Will not madame go and see if M. Salvato needs her, since she left him at two o’clock this morning?’

  “‘I dare not, my dear Nina,’ she replied. ‘I am afraid that my husband may forget something, as he did yesterday, and you know that Dr. Cirillo said it was of the utmost importance that my husband should not know of the young man’s being at Princess Fusco’s house.” Oh, don’t let that disturb you,’ I answered; ‘I can keep an eye on the street, and if by chance the chevalier comes back, as soon as I see him coming I will run and tell madame; it will be good for me — I want some air.’ And here I am doing sentinel at this door, where I have the pleasure of a talk with you while madame enjoys talking with her invalid.”

  Michael was surprised at something bitter in the words and harsh in the voice of the young girl.

  “And what of the young man?” he asked. “Is he in love with her?”

  “He; I should think so! He devours her with his eyes. Directly she leaves the room they close as if he need see nothing more, not even the daylight. It was no use Dr. Cirillo — who is against husbands knowing that their wives are nursing handsome wounded young men — to forbid him to speak, saying: that if he does he risks rupturing something in his lungs — he is not obeyed on that head. Hardly are they alone than they begin talking without a moment’s pause, and in English or French. The chevalier is a prudent man,” added Nina with a little jerky laugh: “He has taught his wife two foreign languages so that she can freely discuss her affairs with strangers, and so that the household shouldn’t understand.”

  “I had come to see Luisa,” said Michael, “but after what you tell me, I should probably be in her way.” And he made as if to go.

  “No, no, stay, Michael; last time you came she scolded me for letting you go away without seeing her: it seems that the wounded man also desires to thank you.”

  “Well, upon my word, I shan’t be sorry to give him my compliments: he is a fine fellow, and the butcher has learned the weight of his arm.”

  “Come in then, and as there is no danger now of the chevalier’s return, I am going to tell madame you are here.” And the two young people disappeared into the garden to re-appear presently at the top of the steps, and vanish once more into the house.

  As Nina had stated, her mistress had gone into the wounded man’s room nearly half-an-hour previously. From seven in the morning, when she arose, to ten o’clock, when her husband left the house, although Luisa never ceased thinking of the invalid for a moment she did not dare go near him, this interval being entirely devoted to those household cares which we have seen her neglecting the day of Cirillo’s visit and which she thought it imprudent not to resume since. To make up for that, she did not leave Salvato for a minute from ten in the morning till two in the afternoon, the time at which her husband was accustomed to return. After dinner, towards four o’clock, the Chevalier passed into his study and remained there an hour or two.

  For at least an hour, Luisa at peace, and on the pretext of making some change in her dress was supposed to be also in her room, but, light as a bird, she was always in the corridor, and managed to pay two or three visits to the wounded man, at each visit exhorting him to rest and quietness. Then from seven o’clock till ten, the time for visits or a promenade, she again left Salvato who remained in Nina’s care, but whom she used to visit again about eleven, that is directly her husband went to his room. She stayed at Salvato’s bedside till two in the morning, at two she went to her own apartment, whence she did not emerge again till seven as we have said.

  Everything had gone on like this without the least variation since Dr. Cirillo’s first visit, that is for nine days.

  Although Salvato awaited with ever fresh impatience the moment when Luisa would re-appear, to-day, with his eyes on the clock, he seemed to be watching for her return more impatiently than ever. Light as was his fair visitor’s footfall, his eye was so attuned to it, and especially to the way in which Luisa opened the door of communication, that at the first creak and the first sound of a certain satin slipper, a smile, fled since her departure, returned to his lips, and his eyes turned towards that door and remained fixed, as the needle of a compass points to the North star.

  At last Luisa appeared.

  “Oh, you are here,” he said, “thank God, to-day as usual, and at the usual hour!”

  “Yes, thanks to our good Nina, who, of her own accord, offered to go down and watch at the door. How have you passed the night?”

  “Very well! Only, tell me....”

  Salvato took both her hands as she stood by his bedside, and, raising himself to be nearer her, looked at her earnestly.

  Luisa, surprised and ignorant of what he was going to ask, returned his look. There was nothing in it to make her lower her own; his gaze was tender but more questioning than passionate.

  “What do you want me to tell you?” she asked.

  “You left my room yesterday at two o’clock in the morning, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you come back into it?”

  “No.”

  “You are certain?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then,” said the young man, speaking to himself, “it is she.”

  “Who? She?” enquired Luisa, more astonished than ever.

  “My mother,” replied Salvato, into whose eyes came a dreamy expression, and whose head fell on his chest with a sigh neither painful nor over-sad.

  At these words: “My mother,” Luisa shuddered.

  “But,” she queried, “your mother is dead?”

  “Have you not heard, dear Luisa,” returned Salvato, with the same dreamy expression, “that there are certain privileged people without any exterior signs of it, and who cannot themselves account for it, who possess the faculty of communicating with the spirits of the dead?”

  “I have sometimes heard the. Chevalier San Felice argue the point with German savants who advanced these communications between earthly beings and those of a higher order as proofs of the immortality of the soul. They called these people seers, these intermediaries, mediums.”

  “Without your being aware of it, to a woman’s grace you unite the education of a learned man and the knowledge of a philosopher,” said Salvato. “So one can discuss everything with you, even the supernatural.”

  “Then,” said she, “you believe that last night.”

  “I believe that last night my mother came into my room and leaned over my bed.”

  “But, dear friend,” asked Luisa, shivering, “how do you explain the apparition of a soul parted from its body?”

  “Some things cannot be explained, you well know. I am relating one of those mysteries.”

  “Friend,” said she, “sometimes you terrify me.”

  The young man, pressing her hand, cast on her his most gentle look. “How can I terrify you. I who would give you the life you have preserved to me?”

  “It is because,” she answered, “you sometimes seem to be not quite of this world.”

  But at this moment there was a tap at the half-open door.

  “Do you want to see me, little sister,” said Michael, putting his head in.

  She slowly withdrew her gaze from Salvato.

  “Yes, come in,” she said, “and see how well our patient is getting on.”

  Michael approached the bed on tip-toe, and Salvato immediately recognizing him held out his hand, which Michael turned over and examined.