He held my sword so that I could not draw it. Ercole adjusted his cloak carelessly and laughed.

"It would almost seem, sir," he said, "as if you were being taught the useful lesson of discretion. I bid you a good-night, sir butcher. Should you still desire my further acquaintance, I am wholly at your service. Meanwhile, I would pray you to remember that even boys-and bastards-may be blessed with memories."

He peacocked across the room, and with an airy gesture waved his cap and left us. The words of one of Luzzaschi's madrigals came softly from him as he sauntered down the corridor. Then a door slammed

heavily and there was silence.

CHAPTER II

THE VICEROY'S BUTCHERS

WITH a short laugh, hardly knowing whether to feel angry or humiliated, I sat down abruptly and addressed von Reinhold.

So," I exclaimed, "it seems that the first blood after all is with the bastard. Since when, may I inquire, have you been pleased to constitute yourself my keeper? Butcher, indeed! Has the German Guard so lost its pride that even a Cardinal's bastard may call us nicknames with impunity ?"

"Tut, tut," he cried, and there was an anxious look upon his countenance. "What has come over you? Don't try to pick a quarrel with me now. You brought the name upon yourself. It was a fair retort enough. When you have been longer in the corps you will learn that Master Ercole is a privileged individual in these respects. A Cardinal's bastard, my good friend, is of more importance than you seem to think-at all events in Naples."

And then he gave rein to his thoughts, and the conversation drifted once more to the condition of the city. In face of the half-mocking, half-persuasive manner which von Reinhold knew so well how to adopt, it was impossible to maintain longer an attitude. of irritation, nor could I but feel that in wrangling with a boy of seventeen I had exhibited some loss of dignity. Mentally consigning Ercole to perdition, I allowed the foolish dispute to slip my memory, and drawing nearer to von Reinhold plunged afresh into the all-absorbing topic of discussion which the advent of the young coxcomb had momentarily interrupted.

It seems but a trivial incident with which to have embarked upon the narrative of my adventures. Little indeed did I then imagine that such a petty ebullition of temper on my part was destined within the next few hours to affect irretrievably the whole course of my career. But who was there that night in Naples who could have foretold one single tithe of the occurrences which were so quickly to convert the aspect of the fairest city upon earth into a scene of revolutionary license and disorder? Change was everywhere around us: a wind blowing from an unknown quarter. Not one of us but felt it like the scirocco irritating men out of their natural courtesy. A fear and unrest lay upon us. We groped like

children in the darkness.

To those who know me only as I am to-day it may seem strange that in the times of which I write I should, under such circumstances, have been content to find myself the hireling of Spanish tyranny. Yet so it was. The death of my father in the preceding autumn had left me as a younger son with straitened albeit not insufficient means of livelihood, while it had emphasised the feeling of dependence upon my elder brother, which was inevitable under the conditions of his heritage. I had accordingly welcomed, if not with avidity, at least without reluctance, the pressing invitation of my old friend, von Reinhold, that I should seek a loophole from my galling situation by the acceptance of a commission in the German body-guard of His Excellency the Duke of Arcos, and carve out for myself a future in the Spanish territory of Naples.

Were there no fools there would be no wise men. I had barely spent six weeks in my new vocation ere, the first flush of excitement dispelled into reality, I was heartily wishing myself once more in Freiburg. Already I had seen too much of Spanish methods to be enamoured of my office.

"I do not quarrel with a butcher!"

I had used a hard saying beyond doubt, but there had been a sting in Ercole's rough retort which

rankled. Only that very afternoon as I stood for a few seconds at the head of the Vico dei Sospiri and watched the workmen at their preparations for the coming Festa, I had caught the word bandied about from one group to another. Hardly was there a hovel which had not its grudge, public or private, against the butchers, as the lazzaroni had been pleased to name us. It was not the work which I had bargained for when circumstances had led me to fall in with the suggestion of von Reinhold and place myself at the disposal of the corpulent bloodthirsty Viceroy. Not, be it understood, that Kuno von Striedbeck was in any way a man whose sword was given to rusting in its scabbard. On the contrary. It was a life of activity and hard blows such as I had hankered after, and the pay was generous. Yet it was no work for a gentleman, this ceaseless butchery of the weak and the unfortunate.

In that year of grace 1647, I have no hesitation in declaring, there was more misery even among the well-to-do in Naples than there had been for upwards of a century. Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leone, Duke of Arcos, Viceroy of Naples, a Grandee of Spain, and for the present my most honourable master, was never wont to mince matters where the imperial finances stood in question. Within the last few years the gabelle or excise had risen to upwards of forty per cent. of the price for which the produce was brought to the gates, and it was alleged with truth that, saving the air of God, there was no article of consumption which remained untaxed.

Meanwhile, by way of object-lesson to the populace, the expenses of the Court had never been greater or more extravagant. During the past decade it was computed that nearly fifty million ducats had been extorted from the people, of which not more than seventeen millions had found their way into the royal coffers. A thoughtless love of pleasure combined with a cunning calculation of interests in increasing yearly the donatives and gabelle, until Neapolitan subjects who had travelled to Turkish coasts did not scruple

to declare that the government of infidels was better than that of His Most Catholic Majesty.

The measure was full. Only an accidental circumstance was wanted to determine the issue. Naples was so exhausted that no means were found to procure even the arrears of the last donative, until finally Genoese capitalists advanced the money. To clear off the debt with its heavy rate of usury the Viceroy was driven to extremities. The tax on fruit was doubled and then trebled.

This new gabella, a tax levied upon all fruit brought into the city-fruit which constituted almost the sole nourishment of the poorer classes during the parching summer months-had wrought the inhabitants to fever pitch. On many days of spring, even before the burden of the tax was felt, crowds ran beside the Viceroy's coach demanding angrily that the gabella should be repealed. But a full month ago the custom-house at the Porta Nolana had been destroyed by powder secretly conveyed into it. It had been intended by this action to compel the Viceroy to take off the taxes. Without loss of time a new and larger custom-house was hastily constructed.

Now to us had fallen the stern task of repression, of teaching the rabble that it was not they but Spain that was the master. It so happened, indeed, that my very first morning of service with the Guard had been signalised by one of those senseless massacres of those whose only fault lay in the fact that they were starving, and I am not ashamed to confess that had no other considerations weighed with me at that moment—and a younger son cannot afford to throw away his chances-I should have taken my sword with small delay elsewhere. Be that as it may, my leanings then as now have ever been in the direction of the weaker side, and not once only, even in those days of lying smiles and quiet dagger-thrusts, had my sympathies gone out to the starving people whom we robbed and terrorised.

Something of the same feeling it was which came