l that should serve the Cause. "While
I live," said Barto, "my enemies have a tolerably active conscience."

The absence of personal animosity in him was not due to magnanimity. He
doubted the patriotism of all booksellers. He had been twice betrayed by
women. He never attempted to be revenged on them; but he doubted the
patriotism of all women. "Use them; keep eye on them," he said. In Venice
he had conspired when he was living there as the clerk of a notary; in
Bologna subsequently while earning his bread as a petty schoolmaster. His
evasions, both of Papal sbirri and the Austrian polizia, furnished
instances of astonishing audacity that made his name a byword for mastery
in the hour of peril. His residence in Milan now, after seven years of
exile in England and Switzerland, was an act of pointed defiance,
incomprehensible to his own party, and only to be explained by the
prevalent belief that the authorities feared to provoke a collision with
the people by laying hands on him. They had only once made a visitation
to his house, and appeared to be satisfied at not finding him. At that
period Austria was simulating benevolence in her Lombardic provinces,
with the half degree of persuasive earnestness which makes a Government
lax in its vigilance, and leaves it simply open to the charge of
effeteness. There were contradictory rumours as to whether his house had
ever been visited by the polizia; but it was a legible fact that his name
was on the window, and it was understood that he was not without elusive
contrivances in the event of the authorities declaring war against him.

Of the nature of these contrivances Luigi had just learnt something. He
had heard Barto Rizzo called 'The Miner' and 'The Great Cat,' and he now
comprehended a little of the quality of his employer. He had entered a
very different service from that of the Signor Antonio-Pericles, who paid
him for nothing more than to keep eye on Vittoria, and recount her goings
in and out; for what absolute object he was unaware, but that it was not
for a political one he was certain. "Cursed be the day when the lust of
gold made me open my hand to Barto Rizzo!" he thought; and could only
reflect that life is short and gold is sweet, and that he was in the
claws of the Great Cat. He had met Barto in a wine-shop. He cursed the
habit which led him to call at that shop; the thirst which tempted him to
drink: the ear which had been seduced to listen. Yet as all his expe