ss and faith, as with things that are their
heritage; but the mere suspicion of coquettry and indifference plunged
him into a fury of jealous wrathfulness, and tossed so desireable an
image of beauty before him that his mad thirst to embrace it seemed love.
By our manner of loving we are known. He thought it no meanness to escape
and cause a warning to be conveyed to the Government that there was
another attempt brewing for the rescue of Count Ammiani. Acting forthwith
on the hot impulse, he seized the lamp. The door was unlocked. Luckier
than Luigi had been, he found a ladder outside, and a square opening
through which he crawled; continuing to ascend along close passages and
up narrow flights of stairs, that appeared to him to be fashioned to
avoid the rooms of the house. At last he pushed a door, and found himself
in an armoury, among stands of muskets, swords, bayonets,
cartouche-boxes, and, most singular of all, though he observed them last,
small brass pieces of cannon, shining with polish. Shot was piled in
pyramids beneath their mouths. He examined the guns admiringly. There
were rows of daggers along shelves; some in sheath, others bare; one that
had been hastily wiped showed a smear of ropy blood. He stood debating
whether he should seize a sword for his protection. In the act of trying
its temper on the floor, the sword-hilt was knocked from his hand, and he
felt a coil of arms around him. He was in the imprisoning embrace of
Barto Rizzo's wife. His first, and perhaps natural, impression accused
her of a violent display of an eccentric passion for his manly charms;
and the tighter she locked him, the more reasonably was he held to
suppose it; but as, while stamping on the floor, she offered nothing to
his eyes save the yellow poll of her neck, and hung neither panting nor
speaking, he became undeceived. His struggles were preposterous; his
lively sense of ridicule speedily stopped them. He remained passive, from
time to time desperately adjuring his living prison to let him loose, or
to conduct him whither he had come; but the inexorable coil kept
fast--how long there was no guessing--till he could have roared out tears
of rage, and that is extremity for an Englishman. Rinaldo arrived in his
aid; but the woman still clung to him. He was freed only by the voice of
Barto Rizzo, who marched him back. Rinaldo subsequently told him that his
discovery of the armoury necessitated his confinement.

"Necessitates it!"