ns action."

"Action," he responded, "decisive and immediate!"

"Action," I retorted, "well matured and sane!"

"Ah! yes, yes," cried Ruffiano; "again, dear sir, you correct me. That
is why I am here. But do not think because I have no patience--do
not think because I am an old--an old--" He searched in his mind for
a simile, and burst out with "gas-balloon" with a laugh of childish
amusement at his own impetuosity. "Do not you think because I am an old
gas-balloon that there are not among us no wiser and cooler heads than
mine! We are at a white-heat now, but there are men among us who can
keep their wits even in a furnace like this. I, dear sir"--he would
have been on his feet again but that I checked him--"I am of the inner
council. We meet to-night, and, hot as I am, I fear my own heat and that
of others. If you wish well to Italy, be one of us. And be sure, sir,
that the rescuer of our one most dearest and most prized shall be
received with honor."

I promised; and he undertook to call upon me at nine o'clock that
evening. And thus, within a day of my return to London, I found
myself pledged to Italy; and a few hours later made one of a caucus of
conspirators, poor and needy and inconsiderable enough to look at, but
holding in their hands, after all, one or two of the strings which,
being pulled at the ripe hour of time, changed the scene for more than
one land in Europe.

CHAPTER IX

And now it seems to me as if I might go on writing to the end of what
remains of my lifetime, and never come to a finish. But I have to
take hold of myself, as it were, with resolution, and to refrain from
speaking of a hundred thousand things which interest me in memory.

The story I am bidden to tell is of how and why I came to rob Miss
Rossano of forty thousand pounds, and yet not to suffer one whit in her
esteem or in my own. It is an easy thing to say to a man, "You took part
in such and such an adventure; you know all about it; take your pen in
your hand and write a history of it." The trouble is in the selection;
and I have found myself so gravely puzzled as to what I shall leave out
that I see nothing for it but to set down formally before myself, for
my own guidance, the names of the people who are most closely and
intimately concerned in what I have to tell; and having done that, I
must resolve to restrict my narrative to the history of their sayings
and doings. Such a countless crowd of people surge up into me