will want care!' said Bartolomeo.
'Oh, they will not be backward. The first word will bring their adhesion.'
'Before that,' said Checco, 'we must make all arrangements. Every point of the execution must be arranged, and to them nothing left but the performance.'
'Well, my idea is—'
'Have the goodness to listen to me,' said Checco. 'You have been talking of committing the deed in church, or when he is out walking. Both of those ways are dangerous, for he is always well surrounded, and in the former, one has to remember the feeling of horror which the people have for sacrilege. Witness Galeazzo in Milan and the Medici in Florence. One is always wise to respect the prejudices of the mob....'
'What do you propose?'
'After the mid-day meal the—our friend is in the habit of retiring to a private room while his servants dine. He is then almost alone. I have often thought it would be an excellent opportunity for an assassin; I did not know it would be myself to take the opportunity.'
He paused and smiled at the pleasantness of the irony.
'Afterwards we shall raise the town, and it is well that as many of our partisans as possible be present. The best day for that is a market-day, when they will come in, and we shall have no need of specially summoning them, and thus giving rise to suspicion.'
Checco looked at us to see what we thought of his idea; then, as if from an after thought, he added,—
'Of course, this is all on the spur of the moment.'
It was well he said that, for I was thinking how elaborately everything was planned. I wondered how long he had the scheme in his head.
We found nothing to say against it.
'And who will do the actual deed?'
'I will!' answered Checco, quietly.
'You!'
'Yes, alone. I will tell you your parts later.'
'And when?'
'Next Saturday. That is the first market-day.'
'So soon.' We were all surprised; it was only five days off, it gave us very little time to think. It was terribly near. Alessandro voiced our feelings.
'Does that give us enough time? Why not Saturday week? There are many needful preparations.'
'There are no needful preparations. You have your swords ready; the others can be warned in a few hours. I wish it were to-morrow.'
'It is—it is very soon.'
'There is less danger of our courage failing meanwhile. We have our goal before us, and we must go to it straight, with clearness of mind and strength of will.'
There was nothing more to be said. As we separated, one of the Moratini asked,—
'About the others, shall we—'
'You can leave everything to me. I take all on my hands. Will you three come here to play a game of chess on Friday night at ten? Our affairs will occupy us so that we shall not meet in the interval. I recommend you to go about as much as possible, and let yourselves be seen in all assemblies and parties....'
Checco was taking his captaincy in earnest. He would allow no contradiction, and no swerving from the path he had marked out—on the spur of the moment.
We had four days in which to make merry and gather the roses; after that, who knows? We might be dangling from the Palace windows in an even line, suspended by elegant hempen ropes; or our heads might be decorating spear heads and our bodies God knows where. I suggested these thoughts to Matteo, but I found him singularly ungrateful. Still, he agreed with me that we had better make the most of our time, and as it accorded with Checco's wishes, we were able to go to the devil from a sense of duty. I am sure Claudia never had a lover more ardent than myself during these four days; but, added to my duties towards that beautiful creature, were routs and banquets, drinking-parties, gaming-parties, where I plunged heavily in my uncertainty of the future, and consequently won a fortune. Checco had taken on his own shoulders all preparations, so that Matteo and I had nothing to do but to enjoy ourselves; and that we did. The only sign I had that Checco had been working was a look of intelligence given me by one or two of those whose names had been mentioned in Checco's study. Jacopo Ronchi, taking leave of me on the Thursday night, said,—
'We shall meet to-morrow.'
'You are coming to play chess, I think,' I said, smiling.
When, at the appointed hour, Matteo and I found ourselves again in Checco's study, we were both rather anxious and nervous. My heart was beating quite painfully, and I could not restrain my impatience. I wished the others would come. Gradually they made their way in, and we shook hands quietly, rather mysteriously, with an air of schoolboys meeting together in the dark to eat stolen fruit. It might have been comic if our mind's eye had not presented us with so vivid a picture of a halter.
Checco began to speak in a low voice, slightly trembling; his emotion was real enough this time, and he did all he could to conceal it.
'My very dear and faithful fellow-citizens,' he began, 'it appears that to be born in Forli, and to live in it in our times, is the very greatest misfortune with which one can be born or with which one can live.'
I never heard such silence as that among the listeners. It was awful. Checco's voice sank lower and lower, but yet every word could be distinctly heard. The tremor was increasing.
'Is it necessary that birth and life here should be the birth and life of slaves? Our glorious ancestors never submitted to this terrible misfortune. They were free, and in their freedom they found life. But this is a living death....'
He recounted the various acts of tyranny which had made the Count hateful to his subjects, and he insisted on the insecurity in which they lived.
'You all know the grievous wrongs I have suffered at the hands of the man whom I helped to place on the throne. But these wrongs I freely forgive. I am filled only with devotion to my country and love to my fellowmen. If you others have private grievances, I implore you to put them aside, and think only that you are the liberators from oppression of all those you love and cherish. Gather up to your hearts the spirit of Brutus, when, for the sake of Freedom, he killed the man whom above all others he loved.'
He gave them the details of the plot; told them what he would do himself, and what they should do, and finally dismissed them.
'Pray to God to-night,' he said earnestly, 'that He will look with favour upon the work which we have set ourselves, and implore Him to judge us by the purity of our intentions rather than by the actions which, in the imperfection of our knowledge, seem to us the only means to our end.'
We made the sign of the cross, and retired as silently as we had come.
XXII
My sleep was troubled, and when I woke the next morning the sun had only just risen.
