.'

'She must not,' said Agostino imperiously.

'She does.'

'I must stop that.' Agostino jumped out of bed.

The young men beset him with entreaties to leave the option to her.

'Fools!' he cried, plunging a rageing leg into his garments. 'Here, Iris!
Mercury! fly to Jupiter and say we are all old men and boys in Italy, and
are ready to accept a few middleaged mortals as Gods, if they will come
and help us. Young fools! Do you know that when you conspire you are in
harness, and yoke-fellows, every one?'

'Yoked to that Barto Rizzo!'

'Yes; and the worse horse of the two. Listen, you pair of Nuremberg
puppet-heads! If the Chief were here, I would lie still in my bed. Medole
has stopped the outbreak. Right or wrong, he moves a mass; we are
subordinates--particles. The Chief can't be everywhere. Milan is too hot
for him. Two men are here, concealed--Rinaldo and Angelo Guidascarpi. The
rumour springs from that. They have slain Count Paul Lenkenstein, and
rushed to old Milan for work, with the blood on their swords. Oh, the
tragedy!--when I have time to write it. Let me now go to my girl, to my
daughter! The blood of the Lenkenstein must rust on the steel. Angelo
slew him: Rinaldo gave him the cross to kiss. You shall have the whole
story by-and-by; but this will be a lesson to Germans not to court our
Italian damsels. Lift not that curtain, you Pannonian burglars! Much do
we pardon; but bow and viol meet not, save that they be of one wood;
especially not when signor bow is from yonderside the Rhoetian Alps, and
donzella Viol is a growth of warm Lombardy. Witness to it, Angelo and
Rinaldo Guidascarpi! bravo! You boys there--you stand like two Tyrolese
salad-spoons! I say that my girl, my daughter, shall never help to fire
blank shot. I sent my paternal commands to her yesterday evening. Does
the wanton disobey her father and look up to a pair of rocket-headed
rascals like you? Apes! if she sings that song to-night, the ear of Italy
will be deaf to her for ever after. There's no engine to stir to-night;
all the locks are on it; she will send half-a-dozen milkings like you to
perdition, and there will be a circle of black blood about her name in
the traditions of the insurrection--do you hear? Have I cherished her for
that purpose? to have her dedicated to a brawl!'

Agostino fumed up and down the room in a confusion of apparel, savouring
his epithets and imaginative peeps while he stormed, to get a relish out
of som