make an Austrian out of such Italian material. The Piaveni revolt had
stopped that and all their intercourse by the division of the White
Hand, as it was called; otherwise, the hand of the corpse. Ammiani had
known also Count Paul von Lenkenstein. To his mind, death did not mean
much, however pleasant life might be: his father and his friend had
gone to it gaily; and he himself stood ready for the summons: but the
contemplation of a domestic judicial execution, which the Guidascarpi
seemed to have done upon Count Paul, affrighted him, and put an end
to his temporary capacity for labour. He felt as if a spent shot were
striking on his ribs; it was the unknown sensation of fear. Changeing,
it became pity. 'Horrible deaths these Austrians die!' he said.

For a while he regarded their lot as the hardest. A shaft of sunlight
like blazing brass warned him that the day dropped. He sent to his
mother's stables, and rode at a gallop round Milan, dining alone in one
of the common hotel gardens, where he was a stranger. A man may have
good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted, who
shrinks from an hour that is suspended in doubt. He was aware of the
pallor and chill of his looks, and it was no marvel to him when two
sbirri in mufti, foreign to Milan, set their eyes on him as they passed
by to a vacant table on the farther side of the pattering gold-fish
pool, where he sat. He divined that they might be in pursuit of the
Guidascarpi, and alive to read a troubled visage. 'Yet neither Rinaldo
nor Angelo would look as I do now,' he thought, perceiving that these
men were judging by such signs, and had their ideas. Democrat as he
imagined himself to be, he despised with a nobleman's contempt creatures
who were so dead to the character of men of birth as to suppose that
they were pale and remorseful after dealing a righteous blow, and that
they trembled! Ammiani looked at his hand: no force of his will could
arrest its palsy. The Guidascarpi were sons of Bologna. The stupidity
of Italian sbirri is proverbial, or a Milanese cavalier would have been
astonished to conceive himself mistaken for a Bolognese. He beckoned to
the waiter, and said, 'Tell me what place has bred those two fellows on
the other side of the fountain.' After a side-glance of scrutiny, the
reply was, 'Neapolitans.' The waiter was ready to make an additional
remark, but Ammiani nodded and communed with a toothpick. He was sure
that those Neapolita