whom I could rely, might be the fittest person to help me. The first man whom I thought of, under these circumstances, was also the only Italian with whom I was intimately acquainted —my quaint little friend, Professor Pesca. be tempted out. I had no great reason to fear I waited a little while, and the singing and the whistling ceased. "Come, kiss me, my pretties!" said the deep voice. There was a responsive twittering and chirping-a low, oily laugh-a silence of a minute or so-and then I heard the opening of the house door. I turned, and retraced my steps. The magnificent melody of the Prayer in Rossini's "Moses," sung in a sonorous bass voice, rose grandly through the suburban silence of the place. The front garden gate opened and closed. The Count had come out. No one appeared at the windows in the front The Professor has been so long absent from of the house. I walked down a turning which these pages, that he has run some risk of being ran past the side of it, and looked over the low forgotten altogether. It is the necessary law garden wall. One of the back windows on the of such a story as mine, that the persons lower floor was thrown up, and a net was concerned in it only appear when the course of stretched across the opening. I saw nobody; events takes them up-they come and go, not but I heard, in the room, first a shrill whistling by favour of my personal partiality but by right and singing of birds-then, the deep ringing of their direct connexion with the circumstances voice which Marian's description had made fato be detailed. For this reason, not Pesca only, miliar to me. "Come out on my little finger, but my mother and sister as well, have been left my pret-pret-pretties!" cried the voice. "Come far in the background of the narrative. My out, and hop up-stairs! One, two, three-and visits to the Hampstead cottage; my mother's up! Three, two, one-and down! One, two, lamentable belief in the denial of Laura's three-twit-twit-twit-tweet!" The Count was identity which the conspiracy had accomplished; exercising his canaries, as he used to exercise my vain efforts to overcome the prejudice, on them in Marian's time, at Blackwater Park. her part and on my sister's, to which, in their jealous affection for me, they both continued to adhere; the painful necessity which that prejudice imposed on me of concealing my marriage from them till they had learnt to do justice to my wife-all these little domestic occurrences have been left unrecorded, because they were not essential to the main interest of the story. It is nothing that they added to my anxieties and embittered my disappointments-the steady march of events has inexorably passed them by. For the same reason, I have said nothing, here, of the consolation that I found in Pesca's brotherly affection for me, when I saw him again after the sudden cessation of my residence at Limmeridge House. I have not recorded the fidelity with which my warm-hearted little friend followed me to the place of embarkation, when I sailed for Central America, or the noisy transport of joy with which he received me when we next met in London. If I had felt justified in accepting the offers of service which he made to me, on my return, he would have appeared again, long ere this. But, though I knew that his honour and his courage were to be implicitly relied on, I was not so sure that his discretion was to be trusted; and, for that reason only, I followed the course of all my inquiries alone. It will now be sufficiently understood that Pesca was not separated from all connexion with me and my interests, although he has hitherto been separated from all connexion with the progress of this narrative. He was as true and as ready friend of mine still, as ever he had been in his life. a Before I summoned Pesca to my assistance, it was necessary to see for myself what sort of man I had to deal with. Up to this time, I had never once set eyes on Count Fosco. Three days after my return with Laura and Marian to London, I set forth alone for Forestroad, St. John's Wood, between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning. It was a fine day-I had some hours to spare-and I thought it likely, if I waited a little for him, that the Count might He crossed the road, and walked towards the western boundary of the Regent's Park. I kept on my own side of the way, a little behind him, and walked in that direction also. Marian had prepared me for his high stature, his monstrous corpulence, and his ostentatious mourning garments-but not for the horrible freshness and cheerfulness and vitality of the man. He carried his sixty years as if they had been fewer than forty. He sauntered along, wearing his hat a little on one side, with a light jaunty step; swinging his big stick; humming to himself; looking up, from time to time, at the houses and gardens on either side of him, with superb, smiling patronage. If a stranger had been told that the whole neighbourhood belonged to him, that stranger would not have been surprised to hear it. He never looked back: he paid no apparent attention to me, no apparent attention to any one who passed him on his own side of the road-except, now and then, when he smiled and smirked, with an easy, paternal good humour, at the nurserymaids and the children whom he met. In this way, he led me on, till we reached a colony of shops outside the western terraces of the Park. Here, he stopped at a pastrycook's, went in (probably to give an order), and came out again immediately with a tart in his hand. An Italian was grinding an organ before the shop, and a miserable little shrivelled monkey was sitting on the instrument. The Count stopped; bit a piece for himself out of the tart; and gravely handed the rest to the monkey. "My poor little man!" he said, with grotesque tenderness; "you look hungry. In the sacred name of humanity, I offer you some lunch!" The organ-grinder piteously put in his claim to a penny from the benevolent stranger. The Count shrugged his shoulders contemptuously-and passed on. We reached the streets and the better class of shops, between the New-road and Oxfordstreet. The Count stopped again, and entered a small optician's shop, with an inscription in the window, announcing that repairs were neatly executed inside. He came out again, with an opera-glass in his hand; walked a few paces on; and stopped to look at a bill of the Opera, placed outside a music-seller's shop. He read the bill attentively, considered a moment, and then hailed an empty cab as it passed him. "Opera-box-office," he said to the man-and was driven away. I crossed the road, and looked at the bill in my turn. The performance announced was "Lucrezia Borgia," and it was to take place that evening. The opera-glass in the Count's hand, his careful reading of the bill, and his direction to the cabman, all suggested that he proposed making one of the audience. I had the means of getting an admission for myself and a friend, to the pit, by applying to one of the scenepainters attached to the theatre, with whom I had been well acquainted in past times. There was a chance, at least, that the Count might be easily visible among the audience, to me, and to any one with me; and, in this case, I had the means of ascertaining whether Pesca knew his countryman, or not, that very night. This consideration at once decided the disposal of my evening. I procured the tickets, leaving a note at the Professor's lodgings on the way. At a quarter to eight, I called to take him with me to the theatre. My little friend was in a state of the highest excitement, with a festive flower in his button-hole, and the largest opera-glass I ever saw hugged up under his arm. "Are you ready?" I asked. Right-all-right," said Pesca. We started for the theatre. III. THE last notes of the introduction to the opera were being played, and the seats in the pit were all filled, when Pesca and I reached the theatre. There was plenty of room, however, in the passage that ran round the pit, which was precisely the position best calculated to answer the purpose for which I was attending the performance. I went first to the barrier separating us from the stalls; and looked for the Count in that part of the theatre. He was not there. Returning along the passage, on the left hand side from the stage, and looking about me attentively, I discovered him in the pit. He occupied an excellent place, some twelve or fourteen seats from the end of a bench, within three rows of the stalls. I placed myself exactly on a line with him; Pesca standing by my side. The Pro fessor was not yet aware of the purpose for which I had brought him to the theatre, and he was rather surprised that we did not move nearer to the stage. The curtain rose, and the opera began. Throughout the whole of the first act, we remained in our position; the Count, absorbed by the orchestra and the stage, never casting so much as a chance glance at us. Not a note of Donizetti's delicious music was lost on him. There he sat, high above his neighbours, smiling, and nodding his great head enjoyingly, from time to time. When the people near him applauded the close of an air (as an English audience in such circumstances always will applaud), without the least consideration for the orchestral movement which immediately followed it, he looked round at them with an expression of compassionate remonstrance, and held up one hand with a gesture of polite entreaty. At the more refined passages of the singing, at the more delicate phrases of the music, which passed unapplauded by others, his fat hands adorned with perfectly-fitting black kid gloves, softly patted each other, in token of the cultivated appreciation of a musical man. At such times, his oily murmur of approval, "Bravo! Bra-a-a-a!" hummed through the silence, like the purring of a great cat. His immediate neighbours on either side-hearty, ruddy-faced people from the coun-try, basking amazedly in the sunshine of fashionable London-seeing and hearing him, began to follow his lead. Many a burst of applause from the pit, that night, started from the soft, comfortable patting of the black-gloved hands. The man's voracious vanity devoured this implied tribute to his local and critical supremacy, with an appearance of the highest relish. Smiles rippled continuously over his fat face. He looked about him, at the pauses in the music, serenely satisfied with himself and his fellowcreatures. "Yes! yes! these barbarous English people are learning something from ME. Here, there, and everywhere, I-Fosco-am an Influence that is felt, a Man who sits supreme!" If ever face spoke, his face spoke then-and that was its language. The curtain fell on the first act; and the audience rose to look about them. This was the time I had waited for-the time to try if Pesca knew him. He rose with the rest, and surveyed the occupants of the boxes grandly with his opera-glass. At first, his back was towards us; but he turned round, in time, to our side of the theatre, and looked at the boxes above us; using his glass for a few minutes-then removing it, but still continuing to look up. This was the moment I chose, when his full face was in view, for directing Pesca's attention to him. 66 Do you know that man ?" I asked. "Which man, my friend ?" "The tall, fat man, standing there, with his face towards us." Pesca raised himself on tiptoe, and looked at the Count. "No," said the Professor. "The big fat man is a stranger to me. Is he famous? Why do you point him out ?" "Because I have particular reasons for wishing to know something of him. He is a countryman of yours; his name is Count Fosco. Do you know that name ?" "Not I, Walter. Neither the name nor the man is known to me." "Are you quite sure you don't recognise him? Look again; look carefully. I will tell you why I am so anxious about it, when we leave the theatre. Stop! let me help you up here, where you can see him better." move for the first time when Pesca moved, so The moment he showed himself to be thus I helped the little man to perch himself on the engaged, the Count turned round; slipped past edge of the raised dais upon which the pit-seats the persons who occupied seats on the farther were all placed. Here, his small stature was no side of him from where we stood; and disaphindrance to him; here, he could see over the peared in the middle passage down the centre of heads of the ladies who were seated near the outer- the pit. I caught Pesca by the arm; and, to most part of the bench. A slim, light-haired man, his inexpressible astonishment, hurried him standing by us, whom I had not noticed before- round with me to the back of the pit, to ina man with a scar on his left cheek-looked at- tercept the Count before he could get to the tentively at Pesca as I helped him up, and then door. Somewhat to my surprise, the slim man looked still more attentively, following the direc-hastened out before us, avoiding a stoppage tion of Pesca's eyes, at the Count. Our conversation might have reached his cars, and might, as it struck me, have roused his curiosity. Meanwhile, Pesca fixed his eyes earnestly on the broad, full, smiling face, turned a little upward, exactly opposite to him. "No," he said; "I have never set my two eyes on that big fat man before, in all my life." As he spoke, the Count looked downwards towards the boxes behind us on the pit tier. The eyes of the two Italians met. The instant before, I had been perfectly satisfied, from his own reiterated assertion, that Pesca did not know the Count. The instant afterwards, I was equally certain that the Count knew Pesca! caused by some people on our side of the pit leaving their places, by which Pesca and myself were delayed. When we reached the lobby the Count had disappeared-and the foreigner with the scar was gone too. "Come home," I said; come home, Pesca, to your lodgings. I must speak to you in private -I must speak directly." "My-soul-bless-my-soul !" cried the Professor, in a state of the extremest bewilderment. What on earth is the matter ?" the future, if I allowed him so much as a day's freedom to act as he pleased. And I doubted that foreign stranger who had got the start of us, and whom I suspected of intentionally following him out. I walked on rapidly, without answering. The circumstances under which the Count had left the theatre suggested to me that his extraordinary anxiety to escape Pesca might carry him to further extremities still. He might Knew him; and-more surprising still-escape me, too, by leaving London. I doubted feared him as well! There was no mistaking the change that passed over the villain's face. The leaden hue that altered his yellow complexion in a moment, the sudden rigidity of all his features, the furtive scrutiny of his cold grey eyes, the motionless stillness of him from head to foot, told their own tale. A mortal dread had mastered him, body and soul-and his own recognition of Pesca was the cause of it! The slim man, with the scar on his cheek, was still close by us. He had apparently drawn his inference from the effect produced on the Count by the sight of Pesca, as I had drawn mine. He was a mild gentlemanlike man, looking like a foreigner; and his interest in our proceedings was not expressed in anything approaching to an offensive manner. For my own part, I was so startled by the change in the Count's face, so astounded at the entirely unexpected turn which events had taken, that I knew neither what to say or do next. Pesca roused me by stepping back to his former place at my side, and speaking first. "How the fat man stares!" he exclaimed. "Is it at me? Am I famous? How can he know me, when I don't know him ?" I kept my eye still on the Count. I saw him With this double distrust in my mind, I was not long in making Pesca understand what I wanted. As soon as we two were alone in his room, I increased his confusion and amazement a hundredfold by telling him what my purpose was, as plainly and unreservedly as I have acknowledged it here. "My friend, what can I do?" cried the Professor, piteously appealing to me with both hands. "Deuce-what-the-deuce! how can I help you, Walter, when I don't know the man?" He knows you-he is afraid of you-he has left the theatre to escape you. Pesca! there must be a reason for this. Look back into your own life, before you came to England. You left Italy, as you have told me yourself, for political reasons. You have never mentioned those reasons to me; and I don't inquire into them, now. I only ask you to consult your own recollections, and to say if they suggest no past cause for the terror which the first sight of you produced in that man." To my unutterable surprise, these words, harmless as they appeared to me, produced the same astounding effect on Pesca which the sight of Pesca had produced on the Count. The rosy face of my little friend whitened in an instant; and he drew back from me slowly, trembling from head to foot. Walter !" he said. "You don't know what you ask." He spoke in a whisper-he looked at me as if I had suddenly revealed to him some hidden danger to both of us. In less than one minute of time, he was so altered from the easy, lively, quaint little man of all my past experience, that if I had met him in the street, changed as I saw him now, I should most certainly not have known him again. him the use of the quaint turns and phrases of his ordinary vocabulary, was painfully increasing the difficulty he had felt from the first in speaking to me at all. Having learnt to read and understand his native language (though not to speak it), in the earlier days of our intimate companionship, I now suggested to him that he should express himself in Italian, while I used English in putting any questions which might be necessary to my enlightenment. He accepted the proposal. In his own smooth-flowing language-spoken with a vehement agitation which betrayed itself in the perpetual working of his features, in the wildness and the suddenness of his foreign gesticulations, but never in the raising of his voice-I now heard the words which armed me to meet the last struggle that is left for this story to record.* "You know nothing of my motive for leaving Italy," he began, "except that it was for political reasons. If I had been driven to this country by the persecution of my government, I should not have kept those reasons a secret from "Forgive me, if I have unintentionally pained and shocked you," I replied. "Remember the cruel wrong my wife has suffered at Count Fosco's hands. Remember that the wrong can never be redressed, unless the means are in my power of forcing him to do her justice. I spoke in her interests, Pesca-I ask you again to for-you or from any one. I have concealed them begive me I can say no more.' I rose to go. He stopped me before I reached "Wait," he said. "You have shaken me from head to foot. You don't know how I left my country, and why I left my country. Let me compose myself-let me think, if I can." cause no government authority has pronounced the sentence of my exile. You have heard, Walter, of the political Societies that are hidden in every great city on the continent of Europe? To one of those Societies I belonged in Italyand belong still, in England. When I came to this country, I came by the direction of my Chief. I was over-zealous, in my younger time; I ran the risk of compromising myself and others. For those reasons, I was ordered to emigrate to England, and to wait. I emi I returned to my chair. He walked up and down the room, talking to himself incoherently in his own language. After several turns backwards and forwards, he suddenly came up to me, and laid his little hands with a strange tender-grated-I have waited-I wait, still. To-morrow, ness and solemnity on my breast. "On your heart and soul, Walter," he said, "is there no other way to get to that man but the chance-way through me?" I may be called away: ten years hence, I may be called away. It is all one to me-I am here, I support myself by teaching, and I wait. I violate no oath (you shall hear why presently) in making my confidence complete by telling you the name of the Society to which I belong. All pas-I do is to put my life in your hands. If what I say to you now is ever known by others to have passed my lips, as certainly as we two sit here, I am a dead man." he "There is no other way," I answered. He left me again; opened the door of the room and looked out cautiously into the sage; closed it once more; and came back. You won your right over me, Walter," said, "on the day when you saved my life. It was yours from that moment, when you pleased to take it. Take it now. Yes! I mean what I say. My next words, as true as the good God is above us, will put my life into your hands." The trembling earnestness with which he uttered this extraordinary warning, carried with it to my mind the conviction that he spoke the truth. He whispered the next words in my ear. I keep the secret which he thus communicated. The Society to which he belonged, will be sufficiently individualised for the purpose of these pages, if I call it "The Brotherhood," on the few occasions when any reference to the subject will be needed in this place. "The object of the Brotherhood," Pesca went "Mind this!" he went on, shaking his hands on, "is, briefly, the object of other political at me in the vehemence of his agitation. "I societies of the same sort-the destruction of hold no thread, in my own mind, between that tyranny, and the assertion of the rights of the man, Fosco, and the past time which I call back people. The principles of the Brotherhood are to me, for your sake. If you find the thread, two. So long as a man's life is useful, or even keep it to yourself-tell me nothing-on my harmless only, he has the right to enjoy it. But, knees, I beg and pray, let me be ignorant, let me be innocent, let me be blind to all the future, as I am now!" He said a few words more, hesitatingly and disconnectedly-then stopped again. I saw that the effort of expressing himself in English, on an occasion too serious to permit Pesca's statement to me, with the careful suppres*It is only right to mention, here, that I repeat sions and alterations which the serious nature of the subject and my own sense of duty to my friend demand. My first and last concealments from the reader are those which caution renders absolutely necessary in this portion of the narrative. to wait-our second business to know how to obey when the word is spoken. Some of us may wait our lives through, and may not be wanted. Some of us may be called to the work, or to the preparation for the work, the very day of our admission. I myself-the little, easy, cheerful man you know, who, of his own accord, would hardly lift up his handkerchief to strike if his life inflicts injury on the well-being of his fellow-men, from that moment he forfeits the right, and it is not only no crime but a positive merit to deprive him of it. It is not for me to say in what frightful circumstances of oppression and suffering this Society took its rise. It isnot for you tosay-you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what ex-down the fly that buzzes about his face-I, in tremities you proceeded to in the conquering my younger time, under provocation so dreadful it is not for you to say how far the worst of that I will not tell you of it, entered the all exasperations may, or may not, carry the Brotherhood by an impulse, as I might have maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron killed myself by an impulse. I must remain in that has entered into our souls has gone too deep it, now-it has got me, whatever I may think for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! of it in my better circumstances and my cooler Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in manhood, to my dying day. While I was still wonder at that secret self which smoulders in Italy, I was chosen Secretary; and all the in him, sometimes under the every-day respect-members of that time, who were brought face ability and tranquillity of a man like me; some- to face with my President, were brought face to times under the grinding poverty, the fierce face also with me." squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am-but judge us not! In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice; the long luxury of your own freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now." All the deepest feelings of his nature seemed to force themselves to the surface in those words; all his heart was poured out to me, for the first time in our lives-but still, his voice never rose; still his dread of the terrible revelation he was making to me, never left him. "So far," he resumed, "you think the Society like other Societies. Its object (in your English opinion) is anarchy and revolution. It takes the life of a bad King or a bad Minister, as if the one and the other were dangerous wild beasts to be shot at the first opportunity. I grant you this. But the laws of the Brotherhood are the laws of no other political society on the face of the earth. The members are not known to one another. There is a President in Italy; there are Presidents abroad. Each of these has his Secretary. The Presidents and the Secretaries know the members; but the members, among themselves, are all strangers, until their Chiefs see fit, in the political necessity of the time, or in the private necessity of the society, to make them known to each other. With such a safeguard as this, there is no oath among us on admittance. We are identified with the Brotherhood by a secret mark, which we all bear, which lasts while our lives last. We are told to go about our ordinary business, and to report ourselves to the President, or the Secretary, four times a year, in the event of our services being required. We are warned, if we betray the Brotherhood, or if we injure it by serving other interests, that we die by the principles of the Brotherhood-die by the hand of a stranger who may be sent from the other end of the world to strike the blow-or by the hand of our own bosom-friend, who may have been a member unknown to us through all the years of our intimacy. Sometimes, the death is delayed; sometimes, it follows close on the treachery. It is our first business to know how I began to understand him; I saw the end towards which his extraordinary disclosure was now tending. He waited a moment, watching me earnestly-watching, till he had evidently guessed what was passing in my mind, before he resumed. 66 You have drawn your own conclusion already," he said. "I see it in your face. Tell me nothing; keep me out of the secret of your thoughts. Let me make my one last sacrifice of myself, for your sake-and then have done with this subject, never to return to it again." He signed to me not to answer him-roseremoved his coat-and rolled up the shirt-sleeve on his left arm. "I promised you that this confidence should be complete," he whispered, speaking close at my ear, with his eyes looking watchfully at the door. "Whatever comes of it, you shall not reproach me with having hidden anything from you which it was necessary to your interests to know. I have said that the Brotherhood identifies its members by a mark that lasts for life. See the place, and the mark on it, for yourself." He raised his bare arm, and showed me, high on the upper part of it and on the inner side, a brand deeply burnt in the flesh and stained of a bright blood-red colour. I abstain from describing the device which the brand represented. It will be sufficient to say that it was circular in form, and so small that it would have been completely covered by a shilling coin. "A man who has this mark, branded in this place," he said, covering his arm again, "is a member of the Brotherhood. A man who has been false to the Brotherhood is discovered, sooner or later, by the Chiefs who know himPresidents or Secretaries, as the case may be. And a man discovered by the Chiefs is dead. No human laws can protect him. Remember what you have seen and heard; draw what conclusions you like; act as you please. But, in the name of God, whatever you discover, whatever you do, tell me nothing! Let me remain free from a responsibility which it horrifies me to think of-which I know, in my conscience, is not my responsibility, now. For the last time, |