look at his master. Seeing that Cosmo seemed disposed to listen he continued: "It is vaulted like a cellar and has a little door giving into a side street. People come in and put as they like. All sorts of low people, sir, facchini and carters and boatmen and suchlike. There was an old fellow came in, a gray-headed man, a cobbler, I suppose, as he brought a bagful of mended shoes for the servants of the house. He emptied the lot on the stone floor, sir, and instead of trying to collect his money from the people that were scrambling for them he made them a speech. He spouted, sir, without drawing a breath. The courier-valet of an English doctor staying here, a Swiss I think he is, says to me in his broken English: 'He would cut every Austrian throat in this town.' We were having a glass of wine together and I asked him, 'And what do you think of that?' And he says to me, after thinking a bit, 'I agree with him. . . .' Very dreadful, sir," concluded Spire with a perfectly unmoved face. 

 Cosmo looked at him in silence for a time. "It was very bold talk if that is what the man really said," he remarked. "Especially as the place is so public as you say it is." 

 "Absolutely open to the street, sir; and that same Swiss fellow had told me just before that the town was full of spies and what they call sbirri that came from Turin with the King. The King is staying at the Palace, sir. They are expecting the Queen of Sardinia to arrive any day. You didn't know, sir? They say she will come in an English man-of-war. That old cobbler was very abusive about the King of Piedmont too. Surely talk like that can't be safe anywhere." 

 Spire paused suddenly and Cosmo Latham turned his back to the fire. 

 "Well, and what happened?" he asked with a smile. 

 "You could have heard a pin drop," said Spire in equable tones, "till that Signor Cantelucci—that's the padrone of this inn, sir . . ." 

 "The man who lighted me up?" said Cosmo. 

 "Yes, sir. . . . I didn't know he was in the room till suddenly he spoke behind my back telling one of the scullions that was there to give the man a glass of wine. And what the old fellow must do but raise it above his head and shout a toast to the Destructor of the Austrians before he tossed it down his throat. I was quite astonished, but Signor Cantelucci never turned a hair. He offered his snuffbox to that doctor's courier and myself and shrugged his shoulders. 'It was only Pietro,' he said, 'a 

 Prev. P 36/183 next