Part 14 (2/2)

When Ferdinand Lind looked out the next day from the window of his hotel, it was not at all the Venice of chromolithography that lay before him. The morning was wild, gray, and gloomy, with a bl.u.s.tering wind blowing down from the north; the broad expanse of green water ruffled and lashed by continual squalls; the sea-gulls wheeling and dipping over the driven waves; the dingy ma.s.ses of s.h.i.+pping huddled along the wet and deserted quays; the long spur of the Lido a thin black line between the green sea and purple sky; and the domed churches over there, and the rows of tall and narrow and grumbling palaces overlooking the ca.n.a.ls nearer at hand, all alike dismal and bedraggled and dark.

When he went outside he s.h.i.+vered; but at all events these cold, damp odors of the sea and the rainy wind were more grateful than the mustiness of the hotel. But the deserted look of the place! The gondolas, with their hea.r.s.e-like coverings on, lay empty and untended by the steps, as if waiting for a funeral procession. The men had taken shelter below the archways, where they formed groups, silent, uncomfortable, sulky. The few pa.s.sers-by on the wet quays hurried along with their voluminous black cloaks wrapped round their shoulders, and hiding most of the mahogany-colored faces. Even the plague of beggars had been dispersed; they had slunk away s.h.i.+vering into the foul-smelling nooks and crannies. There was not a soul to give a handful of maize to the pigeons in the Place of St. Mark.

But when Lind had got round into the Place, what was his surprise to find Calabressa having his breakfast in the open air at a small table in front of a _cafe_. He was quite alone there; but he seemed much content.

In fact, he was laughing heartily, all to himself, at something he had been reading in the newspaper open before him.

”Well,” said Lind, when they had exchanged salutations, ”this is a pleasant sort of a morning for one to have one's breakfast outside!”

”My faith,” said Calabressa, ”if you had taken as many breakfasts as I have shut up in a hole, you would be glad to get the chance of a mouthful of fresh air. Sit down, my friend.”

Lind glanced round, and then sat down.

”My good friend Calabressa,” he said presently, ”for one connected as you are with certain persons, do you not think now that your costume is a little conspicuous? And then your sitting out here in broad daylight--”

”My friend Lind,” said he, with a laugh, ”I am as safe here as if I were in Naples, which I believe to be the safest place in the world for one not in good odor with the authorities. And if there was a risk, would I not run it to hear my little nightingale over there when she opens the cas.e.m.e.nts? Ah! she is the most charming Rosina in the world.”

”Yes, yes,” said Lind. ”I am not speaking of you. But--the others. The police must guess you are not here for nothing.”

”Oh, the others? Rest a.s.sured. The police might as well try to put their fingers on a globule of quicksilver. It is but three days since they left the Piazza del Popolo, Torre del Greco. To-morrow, if their business is finished to-night, they will vanish again; and I shall be dismissed.”

”If their business is finished?” repeated Lind, absently. ”Yes; but I should like to know why they have summoned me all the way from England.

They cannot mean--”

”My dear friend Lind,” said Calabressa, ”you must not look so grave.

Nothing that is going to happen is worth one's troubling one's self about. It is the present moment that is of consequence; and at the present moment I have a joke for you. You know Armfeldt, who is now at Berne: they had tried him only four times in Berlin; and there was only a little matter of nine years' sentence against him. Listen.”

He took up the _Osservatore_, and read out a paragraph, stating that Dr.

Julius Armfeldt had again been tried _in contumaciam_, and sentenced to a further term of two years' imprisonment, for seditious writing.

Further, the publisher of his latest pamphlet, a citizen of Berne, had likewise been sentenced in his absence to twelve months' imprisonment.

”Do they think Armfeldt will live to be a centenarian, that they keep heaping up those sentences against him? Or is it as another inducement for him to go back to his native country and give himself up? It is a great joke, this childish proceeding; but a Government should not declare itself impotent. It is like the Austrians when they hanged you and the others in effigy. Now I remember, the little Natalushka was grieved that she was not born then; for she wished to see the spectacle, and to have killed the people who insulted her father.”

”I am afraid it is no joke at all,” Lind said, gloomily. ”Those Swiss people are craven. What can you expect from a nation of hotel-waiters?

They cringe before every bully in Europe; you will find that, if Bismarck insists, the Federal Council will expel Armfeldt from Switzerland directly. No; the only safe refuge nowadays for the reformers, the Protestants the pioneers of Europe, is England; and the English do not know it; they do not think of it. They are so accustomed to freedom that they believe that is the only possible condition, and that other nations must necessarily enjoy it. When you talk to them of tyranny, of political persecution, they laugh. They cannot understand such a thing existing. They fancy it ceased when Bomba's dungeons were opened.”

”For my part,” said Calabressa, lighting a cigarette, and calling for a small gla.s.s of cognac, ”I am content with Naples.”

”And the protection of pickpockets?”

”My friend,” said the other, coolly, ”if you refer to the most honorable the a.s.sociation of the Camorristi, I would advise you not to speak too loud.”

Calabressa rose, having settled his score with the waiter.

”Allons!” said he. ”What are you going to do to day?”

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