to-morrow morning,' added Leone
Rufo, 'we may as well march out the whole dozen.'

These two were boys under twenty.

'Shall it be the first hit for Captain Weisspriess?' Count Medole said
this while handing a fresh and fairly-buttoned foil to Ammiani.

Romara laughed: 'You will require to fence the round of Milan city, my
dear count, to win a claim to Captain Weisspriess. In the first place, I
yield him to no man who does not show himself a better man than I. It's
the point upon which I don't pay compliments.'

Count Medole bowed.

'But, if you want occupation,' added Luciano, closing his speech with a
merely interrogative tone.

'I scarcely want that, as those who know me will tell you,' said Medole,
so humbly, that those who knew him felt that he had risen to his high
seat of intellectual contempt. He could indulge himself, having shown his
courage.

'Certainly not; if you are devising means of subsistence for the widows
and orphans of the men who will straggle out to be slaughtered to-night,'
said Luciano; 'you have occupation in that case.'

'I will do my best to provide for them,'--the count persisted in his air
of humility, 'though it is a question with some whether idiots should
live.' He paused effectively, and sucked in a soft smile of
self-approbation at the stroke. Then he pursued: 'We meet the day after
to-morrow. The Pope's Mouth is closed. We meet here at nine in the
morning. The next day at eleven at Farugino's, the barber's, in Monza.
The day following at Camerlata, at eleven likewise. Those who attend will
be made aware of the dispositions for the week, and the day we shall name
for the rising. It is known to you all, that without affixing a stigma on
our new prima-donna, we exclude her from any share in this business. All
the Heads have been warned that we yield this night to the Austrians.
Gentlemen, I cannot be more explicit. I wish that I could please you
better.'

'Oh, by all means,' said Pietro Cardi: 'but patience is the pestilence; I
shall roam in quest of adventure. Another quiet week is a tremendous
trial.'

He crossed foils with Leone Rufo, but finding no stop to the drawn
'swish' of the steel, he examined the end of his weapon with a
lengthening visage, for it was buttonless. Ammiani burst into laughter at
the spontaneous boyishness in the faces of the pair of ambitious lads.
They both offered him one of the rapiers upon equal terms. Count Medole's
example of intemperate vanity