that he would find Vittoria
and bend her will.

Agostino had betrayed his weakness to the young men, who read him with
the keen eyes of a particular disapprobation. He delighted in the dark
web of intrigue, and believed himself to be no ordinary weaver of that
sunless work. It captured his imagination, filling his pride with a
mounting gas. Thus he had become allied to Medole on the one hand,
and to Barto Rizzo on the other. The young men read him shrewdly, but
speaking was useless.

Before Carlo parted from Luciano, he told him the burden of the whisper,
which had confirmed what he had heard on the Piazzi d'Armi. It was this:
Barto Rizzo, aware that Lieutenant Pierson was the bearer of despatches
from the Archduke in Milan to the marshal, then in Verona, had followed,
and by extraordinary effort reached Verona in advance; had there tricked
and waylaid him, and obtained, instead of despatches, a letter of
recent date, addressed to him by Vittoria, which compromised the
insurrectionary project.

'If that's the case, my Carlo!' said his friend, and shrugged, and spoke
in a very worldly fashion of the fair sex.

Carlo shook him off. For the rest of the day he was alone, shut up with
his journalistic pen. The pen traversed seas and continents like an old
hack to whom his master has thrown the reins. Apart from the desperate
perturbation of his soul, he thought of the Guidascarpi, whom he knew,
and was allied to, and of the Lenkensteins, whom he knew likewise,
or had known in the days when Giacomo Piaveni lived, and Bianca von
Lenkenstein, Laura's sister, visited among the people of her country.
Countess Anna and Countess Lena von Lenkenstein were the German beauties
of Milan, lively little women, and sweet. Between himself and Countess
Lena there had been tender dealings about the age when sweetmeats have
lost their attraction, and the charm has to be supplied. She was rich,
passionate for Austria, romantic concerning Italy, a vixen in temper,
but with a pearly light about her temples that kept her picture in his
memory. And besides, during those days when women are bountiful to us
as Goddesses, give they never so little, she had deigned to fondle
hands with him; had set the universe rocking with a visible heave of
her bosom; jingled all the keys of mystery; and had once (as to embalm
herself in his recollection), once had surrendered her lips to him.
Countess Lena would have espoused Ammiani, believing in her power to