lect on the desperate business we were here to do.
We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the day
after our arrival we discovered the Prince Camillo's quarters.
The Republic had lodged him, with a small retinue, in the Palazzo
Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the
statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a
garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of
_vicoli_. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to
house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the
Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he
had begun to enjoy himself after the fashion he had learnt in
Brussels, returning to dissipation with an undisguised zest.
The Genoese--themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if
not virtuous--made less than a nine days' wonder of him, he was so
engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for
the fleshpots. There was talk that in a few days he would make
formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the
Bank of Saint George. Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the
shops, the theatres. His very publicity baulked us. We tracked him
daily--his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a
chance to surprise him alone. His eyes, which rested nowhere, never
detected us.

We hunted him together, not consulting Marc'antonio and Stephanu, but
rather agreeing to keep them out of the way. Indeed I divined that
the Princess's anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to
her fear of these two and what they might intend. For my part, I
watched them of an evening, at Messer' Fazio's board, expecting some
sign of jealousy. But it appeared that they had resigned her to me,
and were content to be excluded from our counsels.

Another thing puzzled me. Public as the Prince made himself, he was
never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest
Domenico. Yet--_ame damnee_, or master devil, whichever he might
be--I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him.
So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to
haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde--for three days without
success. But on the fourth I made a small discovery.

The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow
alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet
in width,