y to accept a few middleaged mortals as Gods, if they
will come and help us. Young fools! Do you know that when you conspire
you are in harness, and yoke-fellows, every one?'

'Yoked to that Barto Rizzo!'

'Yes; and the worse horse of the two. Listen, you pair of Nuremberg
puppet-heads! If the Chief were here, I would lie still in my bed.
Medole has stopped the outbreak. Right or wrong, he moves a mass; we are
subordinates--particles. The Chief can't be everywhere. Milan is too hot
for him. Two men are here, concealed--Rinaldo and Angelo Guidascarpi.
The rumour springs from that. They have slain Count Paul Lenkenstein,
and rushed to old Milan for work, with the blood on their swords. Oh,
the tragedy!--when I have time to write it. Let me now go to my girl, to
my daughter! The blood of the Lenkenstein must rust on the steel. Angelo
slew him: Rinaldo gave him the cross to kiss. You shall have the whole
story by-and-by; but this will be a lesson to Germans not to court our
Italian damsels. Lift not that curtain, you Pannonian burglars! Much
do we pardon; but bow and viol meet not, save that they be of one wood;
especially not when signor bow is from yonderside the Rhoetian Alps, and
donzella Viol is a growth of warm Lombardy. Witness to it, Angelo and
Rinaldo Guidascarpi! bravo! You boys there--you stand like two Tyrolese
salad-spoons! I say that my girl, my daughter, shall never help to fire
blank shot. I sent my paternal commands to her yesterday evening. Does
the wanton disobey her father and look up to a pair of rocket-headed
rascals like you? Apes! if she sings that song to-night, the ear of
Italy will be deaf to her for ever after. There's no engine to stir
to-night; all the locks are on it; she will send half-a-dozen milkings
like you to perdition, and there will be a circle of black blood about
her name in the traditions of the insurrection--do you hear? Have I
cherished her for that purpose? to have her dedicated to a brawl!'

Agostino fumed up and down the room in a confusion of apparel, savouring
his epithets and imaginative peeps while he stormed, to get a relish
out of something, as beseems the poetic temperament. The youths were
silenced by him; Carlo gladly.

'Troop!' said the old man, affecting to contrast his attire with theirs;
'two graces and a satyr never yet went together, and we'll not frighten
the classic Government of Milan. I go out alone. No, Signor Luciano, I
am not sworn to Count Medole. I se