Franco came near letting the steamer pass Argegno without moving from
his seat.

CHAPTER IX

FOR BREAD, FOR ITALY, FOR GOD

Eight months later, in September, 1855, Franco was occupying a miserable
attic in Via Barbaroux, Turin. In February he had obtained the post of
translator for the _Opinione_, with a monthly salary of eighty-five
lire. Later he began to write the parliamentary reports, and his salary
was raised to a hundred lire. Dina, the manager of the paper, was fond
of him, and procured him extra work outside the office, thus adding
twenty-five or thirty lire to his earnings. Franco lived on sixty lire a
month. The rest went to Lugano to be carried thence to Oria by the
faithful hands of Ismaele. To live a month on sixty lire took more
courage than Franco himself had believed he possessed. The hours at the
office, the translating--a laborious task for one full of scruples and
literary timidity--weighed more heavily upon him than the privations;
moreover he felt even sixty lire was too large a sum, and reproached
himself for not being able to do with less.

He had attached himself to six other refugees, some of whom were
Lombards, others Venetians. They ate together, walked together,
conversed together. With the exception of Franco and a young man from
Udine, all the others were between thirty and forty years of age. All
were extremely poor, and not one of them had ever consented to accept a
penny from the Piedmontese Government as a subsidy. The young man from
Udine came of a rich family, of Austrian tendencies, and received not a
penny from home. He was a good flutist, gave four or five lessons a
week, and played in the small orchestras of second-rate theatres. A
notary from Padua was copyist in Boggio's office. A lawyer from Caprino,
Bergamasco, who had seen service at Rome in 1849, was book-keeper at a
large establishment in Via Nuovo, where umbrellas and walking-sticks
were sold, and for this reason his friends had dubbed him "the knave of
clubs." A fourth, a Milanese, had been through the campaign of 1848 as
one of Carlo Alberto's scouts. His present occupation was to quarrel
continually with "the knave of clubs," for reasons of provincial
rivalry, to teach fencing in a couple of boarding schools, and in winter
to play the piano behind a mysterious curtain in halls where polkas were
danced at a penny each. The others lived on insufficient allowances from
their families. All except Franco were