never be
acknowledged."

"What is to be done, then?"

"I 'll think over it, before we separate. I 'll try and suggest
something. But here comes Morlache; and now be cautious. Not a word to
show that you are ill at ease." The warning was scarcely spoken, when
the Jew entered.

Morlache knew D'Esmonde too well to be surprised at seeing him anywhere
or at any moment He saluted him, therefore, as though they had met the
very day before, and the party sat down to supper, in all the seeming
ease of unburdened minds.

They chatted over the politics of Italy, and the change that had come
over Florence since the last time they had sat together in that chamber.

"It was a noisy scene, that night," said Morlache; "but the streets are
quiet enough now."

"Quiet as a corpse," said Norwood, sternly. "You had no other nostrum
for tranquillity but to extinguish life."

"What you regard as death, my Lord," said the Abbe, "is only a trance.
Italy will rise grander and more powerful than ever. One element alone
has survived through all the convulsive throes, and all the changing
fortunes of this land,--the Papacy. The terrible wars of rival cities
and states, the more bloody conquests of ambitious houses, leave not a
trace behind them; but Rome holds on her proud way, and, like the great
river of the poet, 'Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis oevum. '"

"To which I beg, in a less classical quotation, to rejoin, 'Confound
your politics,'" cried Norwood, laughing. "Come, Morlache, let us
turn to a humbler theme. Who have you got here; who are coming for the
winter?"

"Say, rather, my Lord, who are going away; for there is a general flight
from Florence. All what hotel folk call good families are hastening off
to Rome and Naples."

"What's the meaning of this, then?"

"It is not very difficult, perhaps, to explain," said the Jew; "luxuries
are only the creations of mere circumstance. The rarity of one land
may be the very satiety of another; and the iced-punch that tastes so
exquisite at Calcutta would be but sorry tipple at Coppermine River.
Hence you will see, my Lord, that the English who come here for
wickedness find the place too bad for them. There is no zest to their
vice; they shock nobody, they outrage nothing,--in fact, they are only
as bad as their neighbors."

"I suppose it's neither better nor worse than I remember it these dozen
years and more?" said Norwood.

"Probably not, my Lord, in fact; but, in outward