CHAPTER VII

A week following the day of meetings on the Motterone, Luigi the spy was

in Milan, making his way across the Piazza de' Mercanti. He entered a

narrow court, one of those which were anciently built upon the Oriental

principle of giving shade at the small cost of excluding common air. It

was dusky noon there through the hours of light, and thrice night when

darkness fell. The atmosphere, during the sun's short passage overhead,

hung with a glittering heaviness, like the twinkling iron-dust in a

subterranean smithy. On the lower window of one of the houses there was a

board, telling men that Barto Rizzo made and mended shoes, and requesting

people who wished to see him to make much noise at the door, for he was

hard of hearing. It speedily became known in the court that a visitor

desired to see Barto Rizzo. The noise produced by Luigi was like that of

a fanatical beater of the tomtom; he knocked and banged and danced

against the door, crying out for his passing amusement an adaptation of a

popular ballad:--"Oh, Barto, Barto! my boot is sadly worn: The toe is

seen that should be veiled from sight. The toe that should be veiled like

an Eastern maid: like a sultan's daughter: Shocking! shocking! One of a

company of ten that were living a secluded life in chaste privacy! Oh,

Barto, Barto! must I charge it to thy despicable leather or to my

incessant pilgrimages? One fair toe! I fear presently the corruption of

the remaining nine: Then, alas! what do I go on? How shall I come to a

perfumed end, who walk on ten indecent toes? Well may the delicate

gentlemen sneer at me and scorn me: As for the angelic Lady who deigns to

look so low, I may say of her that her graciousness clothes what she

looks at: To her the foot, the leg, the back: To her the very soul is

bared: But she is a rarity upon earth. Oh, Barto, Barto, she is rarest in

Milan! I might run a day's length and not find her. If, O Barto, as my

boot hints to me, I am about to be stripped of my last covering, I must

hurry to the inconvenient little chamber of my mother, who cannot refuse

to acknowledge me as of this pattern: Barto, O shoemaker! thou son of

artifice and right-hand-man of necessity, preserve me in the fashion of

the time: Cobble me neatly: A dozen wax threads and I am

remade:--Excellent! I thank you! Now I can plant my foot bravely: Oh,

Barto, my shoemaker! between ourselves, it is unpleasant in these refined

days to be likened at all to that preposterous Adam!"

The omission of the apostrophes to Barto left it one of the ironical,

veiled Republican, semi-socialistic ballads of the time, which were sung

about the streets for the sharpness and pith of the couplets, and not

from a perception of the double edge down the length of them.

As Luigi was coming to the terminating line, the door opened. A very

handsome sullen young woman, of the dark, thick-browed Lombard type,

asked what was wanted; at the same time the deep voice of a man;

conjecturally rising from a lower floor, called, and a lock was rattled.

The woman told Luigi to enter. He sent a glance behind him; he had

evidently been drained of his sprightliness in a second; he moved in with

the slackness of limb of a gibbeted figure. The door shut; the woman led

him downstairs. He could not have danced or sung a song now for great

pay. The smell of mouldiness became so depressing to him that the smell

of leather struck his nostrils refreshingly. He thought: "Oh, Virgin!

it's dark enough to make one believe in every single thing they tell us

about the saints." Up in the light of day Luigi had a turn for careless

thinking on these holy subjects.

Barto Rizzo stood before him in a square of cellarage that was furnished

with implements of his craft, too dark for a clear discernment of

features.

"So, here you are!" was the greeting Luigi received.

It was a tremendous voice, that seemed to issue from a vast cavity. "Lead

the gentleman to my sitting-room," said Barto. Luigi felt the wind of a

handkerchief, and guessed that his eyes were about to be bandaged by the

woman behind him. He petitioned to be spared it, on the plea, firstly,

that it expressed want of confidence; secondly, that it took him in the

stomach. The handkerchief was tight across his eyes while he was

speaking. His hand was touched by the woman, and he commenced timidly an

ascent of stairs. It continued so that he would have sworn he was a

shorter time going up the Motterone; then down, and along a passage;

lower down, deep into corpse-climate; up again, up another enormous

mountain; and once more down, as among rats and beetles, and down, as

among faceless horrors, and down, where all things seemed prostrate and

with a taste of brass. It was the poor fellow's nervous imagination,

preternaturally excited. When the handkerchief was caught away, his jaw

was shuddering, his eyes were sickly; he looked as if impaled on the

prongs of fright. It required just half a minute to reanimate this

mercurial creature, when he found himself under the light of two lamps,

and Barto Rizzo fronting him, in a place so like the square of cellarage

which he had been led to with unbandaged eyes, that it relieved his dread

by touching his humour. He cried, "Have I made the journey of the Signor

Capofinale, who visited the other end of the world by standing on his

head?"

Barto Rizzo rolled out a burly laugh.

"Sit," he said. "You're a poor sweating body, and must needs have a dry

tongue. Will you drink?"

"Dry!" quoth Luigi. "Holy San Carlo is a mash in a wine-press compared

with me."

Barto Rizzo handed him a liquor, which he drank, and after gave thanks to

Providence. Barto raised his hand.

"We're too low down here for that kind of machinery," he said. "They say

that Providence is on the side of the Austrians. Now then, what have you

to communicate to me? This time I let you come to my house trust at all,

trust entirely. I think that's the proverb. You are admitted: speak like

a guest."

Luigi's preference happened to be for categorical interrogations. Never

having an idea of spontaneously telling the whole truth, the sense that

he was undertaking a narrative gave him such emotions as a bad swimmer

upon deep seas may have; while, on the other hand, his being subjected to

a series of questions seemed at least to leave him with one leg on shore,

for then he could lie discreetly, and according to the finger-posts, and

only when necessary, and he could recover himself if he made a false

step. His ingenious mind reasoned these images out to his own

satisfaction. He requested, therefore, that his host would let him hear

what he desired to know.

Barto Rizzo's forefinger was pressed from an angle into one temple. His

head inclined to meet it: so that it was like the support to a broad

blunt pillar. The cropped head was flat as an owl's; the chest of immense

breadth; the bulgy knees and big hands were those of a dwarf athlete.

Strong colour, lying full on him from the neck to the forehead, made the

big veins purple and the eyes fierier than the movements of his mind

would have indicated. He was simply studying the character of his man.

Luigi feared him; he was troubled chiefly because he was unaware of what

Barto Rizzo wanted to know, and could not consequently tell what to bring

to the market. The simplicity of the questions put to him was

bewildering: he fell into the trap. Barto's eyes began to get terribly

oblique. Jingling money in his pocket, he said:--"You saw Colonel Corte

on the Motterone: you saw the Signor Agostino Balderini: good men, both!

Also young Count Ammiani: I served his father, the General, and jogged

the lad on my knee. You saw the Signorina Vittoria. The English people

came, and you heard them talk, but did not understand. You came home and

told all this to the Signor Antonio, your employer number one. You have

told the same to me, your employer number two. There's your pay."

Barto summed up thus the information he had received, and handed Luigi

six gold pieces. The latter, springing with boyish thankfulness and pride

at the easy earning of them, threw in a few additional facts, as, that he

had been taken for a spy by the conspirators, and had heard one of the

Englishmen mention the Signorina Vittoria's English name. Barto Rizzo

lifted his eyebrows queerly. "We'll go through another interrogatory in

an hour," he said; "stop here till I return."

Luigi was always too full of his own cunning to suspect the same in

another, until he was left alone to reflect on a scene; when it became

overwhelmingly transparent. "But, what could I say more than I did say?"

he asked himself, as he stared at the one lamp Barto had left. Finding

the door unfastened, he took the lamp and lighted himself out, and along

a cavernous passage ending in a blank wall, against which his heart

knocked and fell, for his sensation was immediately the terror of

imprisonment and helplessness. Mad with alarm, he tried every spot for an

aperture. Then he sat down on his haunches; he remembered hearing word of

Barto Rizzo's rack:--certain methods peculiar to Barto Rizzo, by which he

screwed matters out of his agents, and terrified them into fidelity. His

personal dealings with Barto were of recent date; but Luigi knew him by

repute: he knew that the shoemaking business was a mask. Barto had been a

soldier, a schoolmaster: twice an exile; a conspirator since the day when

the Austrians had the two fine Apples of Pomona, Lombardy and Venice,

given them as fruits of peace. Luigi remembered how he had snapped his

fingers at the name of Barto Rizzo. There was no despising him now. He

could only arrive at a peaceful contemplation of Barto Rizzo's character

by determining to tell all, and (since that seemed little) more than he

knew. He got back to the leather-smelling chamber, which was either the

same or purposely rendered exactly similar to the one he had first been

led to.

At the end of a leaden hour Barto Rizzo returned.

"Now, to recommence," he said. "Drink before you speak, if your tongue is

dry."

Luigi thrust aside the mention of liquor. It seemed to him that by doing

so he propitiated that ill-conceived divinity called Virtue, who lived in

the open air, and desired men to drink water. Barto Rizzo evidently

understood the kind of man he was schooling to his service.

"Did that Austrian officer, who is an Englishman, acquainted with the

Signor Antonio-Pericles, meet the lady, his sister, on the Motterone?"

Luigi answered promptly, "Yes."

"Did the Signorina Vittoria speak to the lady?"

"No."

"Not a word?"

"No."

"Not one communication to her?"

"No: she sat under her straw hat."

"She concealed her face?"

"She sat like a naughty angry girl."

"Did she speak to the officer?"

"Not she!"

"Did she see him?"

"Of course she did! As if a woman's eyes couldn't see through

straw-plait!"

Barto paused, calculatingly, eye on victim.

"The Signorina Vittoria," he resumed, "has engaged to sing on the night

of the Fifteenth; has she?"

A twitching of Luigi's muscles showed that he apprehended a necessary

straining of his invention on another tack.

"On the night of the Fifteenth, Signor Barto Rizzo? That's the night of

her first appearance. Oh, yes!"

"To sing a particular song?"

"Lots of them! ay-aie!"

Barto took him by the shoulder and pressed him into his seat till he

howled, saying, "Now, there's a slate and a pencil. Expect me at the end

of two hours, this time. Next time it will be four: then eight, then

sixteen. Find out how many hours that will be at the sixteenth

examination."

Luigi flew at the torturer and stuck at the length of his straightened

arm, where he wriggled, refusing to listen to the explanation of Barto's

system; which was that, in cases where every fresh examination taught him

more, they were continued, after regularly-lengthening intervals, that

might extend from the sowing of seed to the ripening of grain. "When

all's delivered," said Barto, "then we begin to correct discrepancies. I

expect," he added, "you and I will have done before a week's out."

"A week!" Luigi shouted. "Here's my stomach already leaping like a fish

at the smell of this hole. You brute bear! it's a smell of bones. It

turns my inside with a spoon. May the devil seize you when you're

sleeping! You shan't go: I'll tell you everything--everything. I can't

tell you anything more than I have told you. She gave me a

cigarette--there! Now you know:--gave me a cigarette; a cigarette. I

smoked it--there! Your faithful servant!"

"She gave you a cigarette, and you smoked it; ha!" said Barto Rizzo, who

appeared to see something to weigh even in that small fact. "The English

lady gave you the cigarette?"

Luigi nodded: "Yes;" pertinacious in deception. "Yes," he repeated; "the

English lady. That was the person. What's the use of your skewering me

with your eyes!"

"I perceive that you have never travelled, my Luigi," said Barto. "I am

afraid we shall not part so early as I had supposed. I double the dose,

and return to you in four hours' time."

Luigi threw himself flat on the ground, shrieking that he was ready to

tell everything--anything. Not even the apparent desperation of his

circumstances could teach him that a promise to tell the truth was a more

direct way of speaking. Indeed, the hitting of the truth would have

seemed to him a sort of artful archery, the burden of which should

devolve upon the questioner, whom he supplied with the relation of

"everything and anything."

All through a night Luigi's lesson continued. In the morning he was still

breaking out in small and purposeless lies; but Barto Rizzo had

accomplished his two objects: that of squeezing him, and that of

subjecting his imagination. Luigi confessed (owing to a singular recovery

of his memory) the gift of the cigarette as coming from the Signorina

Vittoria. What did it matter if she did give him a cigarette?

"You adore her for it?" said Barto.

"May the Virgin sweep the floor of heaven into her lap!" interjected

Luigi. "She is a good patriot."

"Are you one?" Barto asked.

"Certainly I am."

"Then I shall have to suspect you, for the good of your country."

Luigi could not see the deduction. He was incapable of guessing that it

might apply forcibly to Vittoria, who had undertaken a grave, perilous,

and imminent work. Nothing but the spontaneous desire to elude the

pursuit of a questioner had at first instigated his baffling of Barto

Rizzo, until, fearing the dark square man himself, he feared him dimly

for Vittoria's sake; he could not have said why. She was a good patriot:

wherefore the reason for wishing to know more of her? Barto Rizzo had

compelled him at last to furnish a narrative of the events of that day on

the Motterone, and, finding himself at sea, Luigi struck out boldly and

swam as well as he could. Barto disentangled one succinct thread of

incidents: Vittoria had been commissioned by the Chief to sing on the

night of the Fifteenth; she had subsequently, without speaking to any of

the English party, or revealing her features "keeping them beautifully

hidden," Luigi said, with unaccountable enthusiasm--written a warning to

them that they were to avoid Milan. The paper on which the warning had

been written was found by the English when he was the only Italian on the

height, lying thereto observe and note things in the service of Barto

Rizzo. The writing was English, but when one of the English ladies--"who

wore her hair like a planed shred of wood; like a torn vine; like a kite

with two tails; like Luxury at the Banquet, ready to tumble over marble

shoulders" (an illustration drawn probably from Luigi's study of some

allegorical picture,--he was at a loss to describe the foreign female

head-dress)--when this lady had read the writing, she exclaimed that it

was the hand of "her Emilia!" and soon after she addressed Luigi in

English, then in French, then in "barricade Italian" (by which phrase

Luigi meant that the Italian words were there, but did not present their

proper smooth footing for his understanding), and strove to obtain

information from him concerning the signorina, and also concerning the

chances that Milan would be an agitated city. Luigi assured her that

Milan was the peacefullest of cities--a pure babe. He admitted his

acquaintance with the Signorina Vittoria Campa, and denied her being "any

longer" the Emilia Alessandra Belloni of the English lady. The latter had

partly retained him in her service, having given him directions to call

at her hotel in Milan, and help her to communicate with her old friend.

"I present myself to her to-morrow, Friday," said Luigi.

"That's to-day," said Barto.

Luigi clapped his hand to his cheek, crying wofully, "You've drawn,

beastly gaoler! a night out of my life like an old jaw-tooth."

"There's day two or three fathoms above us," said Barto; "and hot coffee

is coming down."

"I believe I've been stewing in a pot while the moon looked so cool."

Luigi groaned, and touched up along the sleeves of his arms: that which

he fancied he instantaneously felt.

The coffee was brought by the heavy-browed young woman. Before she

quitted the place Barto desired her to cast her eyes on Luigi, and say

whether she thought she should know him again. She scarcely glanced, and

gave answer with a shrug of the shoulders as she retired. Luigi at the

time was drinking. He rose; he was about to speak, but yawned instead.

The woman's carelessly-dropped upper eyelids seemed to him to be reading

him through a dozen of his contortions and disguises, and checked the

idea of liberty which he associated with getting to the daylight.

"But it is worth the money!" shouted Barto Rizzo, with a splendid

divination of his thought. "You skulker! are you not paid and fattened to

do business which you've only to remember, and it'll honey your legs in

purgatory? You're the shooting-dog of that Greek, and you nose about the

bushes for his birds, and who cares if any fellow, just for exercise,

shoots a dagger a yard from his wrist and sticks you in the back? You

serve me, and there's pay for you; brothers, doctors, nurses, friends,--a

tight blanket if you fall from a housetop! and masses for your soul when

your hour strikes. The treacherous cur lies rotting in a ditch! Do you

conceive that when I employ you I am in your power? Your intelligence

will open gradually. Do you know that here in this house I can conceal

fifty men, and leave the door open to the Croats to find them? I tell you

now--you are free; go forth. You go alone; no one touches you; ten years

hence a skeleton is found with an English letter on its ribs--"

"Oh, stop! signor Barto, and be a blessed man," interposed Luigi,

doubling and wriggling in a posture that appeared as if he were shaking

negatives from the elbows of his crossed arms. "Stop. How did you know of

a letter? I forgot--I have seen the English lady at her hotel. I was

carrying the signorina's answer, when I thought 'Barto Rizzo calls me,'

and I came like a lamb. And what does it matter? She is a good patriot;

you are a good patriot; here it is. Consider my reputation, do; and be

careful with the wax."

Barto drew a long breath. The mention of the English letter had been a

shot in the dark. The result corroborated his devotional belief in the

unerringness of his own powerful intuition. He had guessed the case, or

hardly even guessed it--merely stated it, to horrify Luigi. The letter

was placed in his hands, and he sat as strongly thrilled by emotion,

under the mask of his hard face, as a lover hearing music. "I read

English," he remarked.

After he had drawn the seal three or four times slowly over the lamp, the

green wax bubbled and unsnapped. Vittoria had written the following

lines in reply to her old English friend:--

"Forgive me, and do not ask to see me until we have passed the

fifteenth of the month. You will see me that night at La Scala. I

wish to embrace you, but I am miserable to think of your being in

Milan. I cannot yet tell you where my residence is. I have not met

your brother. If he writes to me it will make me happy, but I

refuse to see him. I will explain to him why. Let him not try to

see me. Let him send by this messenger. I hope he will contrive to

be out of Milan all this month. Pray let me influence you to go for

a time. I write coldly; I am tired, and forget my English. I do

not forget my friends. I have you close against my heart. If it

were prudent, and it involved me alone, I would come to you without

a moment's loss of time. Do know that I am not changed, and am your

affectionate

"Emilia."

When Barto Rizzo had finished reading, he went from the chamber and blew

his voice into what Luigi supposed to be a hollow tube.

"This letter," he said, coming back, "is a repetition of the Signorina

Vittoria's warning to her friends on the Motterone. The English lady's

brother, who is in the Austrian service, was there, you say?"

Luigi considered that, having lately been believed in, he could not

afford to look untruthful, and replied with a sprightly "Assuredly."

"He was there, and he read the writing on the paper?"

"Assuredly: right out loud, between puff-puff of his cigar."

"His name is Lieutenant Pierson. Did not Antonio-Pericles tell you his

name? He will write to her: you will be the bearer of his letter to the

signorina. I must see her reply. She is a good patriot; so am I; so are

you. Good patriots must be prudent. I tell you, I must see her reply to

this Lieutenant Pierson." Barto stuck his thumb and finger astride

Luigi's shoulder and began rocking him gently, with a horrible meditative

expression. "You will have to accomplish this, my Luigi. All fair excuses

will be made, if you fail generally. This you must do. Keep upright while

I am speaking to you! The excuses will be made; but I, not you, must make

them: bear that in mind. Is there any person whom you, my Luigi, like

best in the world?"

It was a winning question, and though Luigi was not the dupe of its

insinuating gentleness, he answered, "The little girl who carries flowers

every morning to the caffe La Scala."

"Ah! the little girl who carries flowers every morning to the caffe La

Scala. Now, my Luigi, you may fail me, and I may pardon you. Listen

attentively: if you are false; if you are guilty of one piece of

treachery:--do you see? You can't help slipping, but you can help

jumping. Restrain yourself from jumping, that's all. If you are guilty of

treachery, hurry at once, straight off, to the little girl who carries

flowers every morning to the caffe La Scala. Go to her, take her by the

two cheeks, kiss her, say to her 'addio, addio,' for, by the thunder of

heaven! you will never see her more."

Luigi was rocked forward and back, while Barto spoke in level tones, till

the voice dropped into its vast hollow, when Barto held him fast a

moment, and hurled him away by the simple lifting of his hand.

The woman appeared and bound Luigi's eyes. Barto did not utter another

word. On his journey back to daylight, Luigi comforted himself by

muttering oaths that he would never again enter into this trap. As soon

as his eyes were unbandaged, he laughed, and sang, and tossed a

compliment from his finger-tips to the savage-browed beauty; pretended

that he had got an armful, and that his heart was touched by the ecstasy;

and sang again: "Oh, Barto, Barto! my boot is sadly worn. The toe is

seen," etc., half-way down the stanzas. Without his knowing it, and

before he had quitted the court, he had sunk into songless gloom,

brooding on the scenes of the night. However free he might be in body,

his imagination was captive to Barto Rizzo. He was no luckier than a

bird, for whom the cage is open that it may feel the more keenly with its

little taste of liberty that it is tied by the leg.