strength, I half raised, half lifted him, and hurled him from me. There was a horrible scream. The light of the lantern shone upon the passage. Another scream, this time from Claudia. A dull splash echoed from the depths beneath us.

"What have I done?" I shouted blankly.

"May God forgive you, Kuno," answered Claudia. And as a lingering wail rose faintly, she slowly descended the staircase with the lantern, and with a stony stare passed by me and knelt down silently beside the oubliette.

CHAPTER XXIX

"PRIUS DEMENTAT"

THAT Claudia should have spoken as she did, I own surprised me. Had not her nerves been overwrought, I cannot imagine that she would ever have addressed me in such fashion.

"You murdered him, you murdered him deliberately."

We had gone from the scene of the tragedy in a somewhat ominous silence, but there had been nothing in her manner to give me warning of so unreasoning an outburst.

I shrugged my shoulders, not being anxious for a controversy. The movement reminded me that, murder or no murder, I had not escaped unscathed from the

encounter.

"It was an accident," I answered curtly. "You should have been quicker with the lantern.

The remark was surely harmless enough, yet somehow it had the effect of provoking her still further.

"You knew that the oubliette was just behind him," she exclaimed, and her voice took on a tone of bitter mockery. "To take advantage of his helplessness was not what I should have expected of a soldier who professes such high principles of chivalry. But you are doubtless contented with your vengeance, and with reason. A boy of seventeen! In very truth, a gallant deed and worthy. It only remains for Salvatore to enshrine the story of your prowess in an ode imperishable."

I walked by her side without replying. In her present frame of mind, rejoinder would but have added

fuel to the fire, nor did I care to explain that her own impulsiveness had more than assisted to bring about the accident. The events of the night would assume another complexion in her eyes by morning. Already the dawn was rising in the heavens, and a few hours sleep too little was quite sufficient to account for her behaviour.

At the entrance to the Palazzo of Donna Anna, whither I escorted her, Claudia at last, and not till then, condescended to abandon her attitude and to detain me while she unfolded the arrangements for a further assembly of the Company. My policy of silence had, I fear, rendered the previous conversation of a too one-sided character for her to find pleasure in prolonging it. Recrimination should be mutual or it rapidly ceases to be interesting. I noted the change

in her manner towards me with amusement.

"We shall be well advised if, ere we publish the news to the Compagnia, we consult Don Muzio as to our future course of action. What with Maso and the Cardinal, things have come to such a pass in Naples that I dread to reflect on the possible results of your handiwork this evening."

"I see no necessity for publishing the news," said I in answer. "We can keep our own counsel, and neither Maso nor the Cardinal will be the wiser. In any case it was an accident. The boy took the wrong turning in the darkness."

She looked at me as though she would have struck me, and without another word unlatched the door and passed into the building.

I mention this conversation merely by way of illustrating the many inconsistencies and contradictions which Claudia shared in common with her brother, and which never wholly left her even during the most happy of the years of married life before us. It is now little more than a twelvemonth since, after a prolonged illness borne with exemplary fortitude and patience, she was taken from me, yet I doubt whether in the inmost chamber of her heart she ever really

forgave me my part in the event which culminated in the tragedy of the oubliette that night in the Tower of the Carmine. No further reproach or mention did I hear from her, but the fact that she insisted on the naming of our first-born son as Ercole spoke volumes no less than did the tender solicitude with which she cherished to the end the comfit-box. I offer no explanation of her feelings in the matter; women are guided by sentiments beyond the comprehension of one whose existence has been spent largely amid the hurly-burly of the camp and battlefield. Henceforth the death of the Cardinal's nephew was tacitly tabooed between us: save only, indeed, upon that one occasion with which I am about to deal, and which so terribly though indirectly precipitated the tragic failure of the revolution. I have used the expression-indirectly-of set purpose: the increasing madness of the CaptainGeneral, so sedulously encouraged by the crafty cunning of both Duke and Cardinal, must sooner or later have inevitably alienated from him the final vestige of his popularity among the populace.

So far, indeed, the lazzaroni had been stanch: how long would they remain so? That was the question which I asked myself as on the following morningthe morning of Monday, the fifteenth of July, the eve of the Feast of the Madonna del Carmine-I sauntered quietly along Toledo.

Consideration the first: Ercole was dead, and the fact could not be concealed indefinitely from the deluded people who, as it were, had set him aloft upon a pedestal of righteousness.

Consideration the second: To what extent would the disclosure avail to counteract the influence of Salvatore. The Company of Death was but a shadow of its former self; whether or not the Painter-Knights could be relied upon in the event of an emergency was more than doubtful. And the better classes, unmistakably, only waited for an opportunity to throw themselves upon the protection of His Eminence, and so at a single stroke dispel all further hope of a peaceful

occupation by the Frenchmen. Spain or Mazarin : after all, what guarantee was there that the promises of the one were worth more than the assurances of the other. Traders and lazzaroni alike were ignorant of Salvator Rosa's ambitions and intentions; for some reason, which I never understood correctly, he had confided his negotiations with Mazarin to the inner circle of the Company alone; the arrival of the French fleet was to be flung as a triumphant surprise at the heads of the populace in the full glow of their emancipation from the thrall of the tyranny which had oppressed them. A noble dream, and one which was in thorough harmony with the spirit of Salvator Rosa; but, reduced to cold reality, how had it prospered?

Symptoms of rising discontent were painfully apparent wherever a cluster of citizens had come together: here grouped about an edict which one was loudly expounding for the benefit of the illiterate there with bated breath discussing some new vagary of the Captain-General. As, now and again, I paused and listened to the troubled murmurs, my heart sank lower. Rumours were rife, many with falsity self-evident upon them, yet others which I knew too well to be substantial in their accuracy.

To a woman whose reputation was infamous even in that city of luxury and vice, Maso had assigned a yearly pension which might have kept an entire family in affluence; he had been seen in the company of a notorious courtesan, upon whom he had showered a priceless wealth of jewels, and whom he had ordered to be treated with exaggerated deference when she appeared in public; he had gone so far as to distribute the titles of prince and duke among his followers.

What need to linger over the tale of these excesses ? His actions could only be explained by their being the beginning of insanity. One anecdote and I have finished. It was a little crooked man who told the story, accompanying his words with gestures which seemed to spread a fever of contagiousness among his hearers: a little crooked man, who might have been a