is the person whom I knew formerly
in England as Mademoiselle Belloni, and is now known as Mademoiselle
Vittoria Campa, may I beg you to inform her that, according to what
I have heard, she is likely to be in some danger to-morrow?' What the
exact nature of the danger was, Captain Gambier could not say.

Ammiani replied: 'She is in need of all her friends,' and took the
pressure of the Englishman's hand, who would fair have asked more but
for the stately courtesy of the Italian's withdrawing salute. Ammiani
could no longer doubt that Vittoria's implication in the conspiracy was
known.

CHAPTER XI

LAURA PIAVENI

After dark on the same day antecedent to the outbreak, Vittoria, with
her faithful Beppo at her heels, left her mother to run and pass one
comforting hour in the society of the Signora Laura Piaveni and her
children.

There were two daughters of a parasitical Italian nobleman, of whom
one had married the patriot Giacomo Piaveni, and one an Austrian
diplomatist, the Commendatore Graf von Lenkenstein. Count Serabiglione
was traditionally parasitical. His ancestors all had moved in Courts.
The children of the House had illustrious sponsors. The House itself was
a symbolical sunflower constantly turning toward Royalty. Great excuses
are to be made for this, the last male descendant, whose father in
his youth had been an Imperial page, and who had been nursed in the
conception that Italy (or at least Lombardy) was a natural fief of
Austria, allied by instinct and by interest to the holders of the Alps.
Count Serabiglione mixed little with his countrymen,--the statement
might be inversed,--but when, perchance, he was among them, he talked
willingly of the Tedeschi, and voluntarily declared them to be gross,
obstinate, offensive-bears, in short. At such times he would intimate in
any cordial ear that the serpent was probably a match for the bear in
a game of skill, and that the wisdom of the serpent was shown in
his selection of the bear as his master, since, by the ordination of
circumstances, master he must have. The count would speak pityingly of
the poor depraved intellects which admitted the possibility of a coming
Kingdom of Italy united: the lunatics who preached of it he considered a
sort of self-elected targets for appointed files of Tyrolese jagers.
But he was vindictive against him whom he called the professional
doctrinaire, and he had vile names for the man. Acknowledging that
Italy mourned he