Cosmo having returned to his room sat down again at the writing-table: for was not this day to be devoted to correspondence? Long after the shade had invaded the greater part of the square below he went on, while the faint shuffle of footsteps and the faint murmur of voices reached him from the pavement below like the composite sound of agitated insect life that can be heard in the depths of a forest. It required all his courage to keep on, piling up words which dealt exclusively with towns—roads—rivers—mountains—the colours of the sky. It was like labouring the description of the scenery of a stage after a great play had come to an end. A vain thing. And still he travelled on. Having at last descended into the Italian plain (for the benefit of Henrietta), he dropped his pen and thought: “At this rate I will never arrive in Genoa.” He fell back in his chair like a weary traveller. He was suddenly overcome by that weary distaste a frank nature feels after an effort at concealing an overpowering sentiment.

But had he really anything to conceal? he asked himself.

Suddenly the door flew open and Spire marched in with four lighted candles on a tray. It was only then that Cosmo became aware how late it was. “Had I not better tear all this up?” he thought, looking down at the sheets before him.

Spire put two candlesticks on the table, disposed the two others, one each side of the mantel-piece, and was going out.

“Wait!” cried Cosmo.

It was like a cry of distress. Spire shut the door quietly and turned about, betraying no emotion. Cosmo seized the pen again and concluded hastily: “I have been in Genoa for the last two days. I have seen Adèle and the marquis. They send their love. You shall have lots about them in my next. I have no time now to tell you what a wonderful person she has become. But perhaps you would not think so.”

After he had signed it, the thought struck him that there was nothing about Napoleon in his letter. He must put in something about Napoleon. He added a P.S.: “You can form no idea of the state of suspense in which all classes live here, from the highest to the lowest, as to what may happen next. All their thoughts are concentrated on Bonaparte. Rumours are flying about of some sort of violence that may be offered to him, assassination, kidnapping. It’s difficult to credit it all, though I do believe that the congress in Vienna is capable of any atrocity. A person I met here suggested that I should go to Livorno. Perhaps I will. But I have lost, I don’t know why, all desire to travel. Should I find a ship ready to sail for England in Livorno, I may take passage in her and come home at once by sea.”

Cosmo collected the pages, and while closing the packet asked himself whether he ought to tell her that? Was it the fact that he had lost all wish to travel? However, he let Spire take the packet to the post, and during the man’s absence took a turn or two in the room. He had got through the day. Now there was the evening to get through somehow. But when it occurred to him that the evening would be followed by the hours of an endless night, filled by the conflict of shadowy thoughts that haunt the birth of a passion, the desolation of the prospect was so overpowering that he could only meet it with a bitter laugh. Spire, returning, stood thunder-struck at the door.

“What’s the matter with you? Have you seen a ghost?” asked Cosmo, who ceased laughing suddenly and fixed the valet with distracted eyes.

“No, sir, certainly not. I was wondering whether you hadn’t better dine in your room.”

“What do you mean? Am I not fit to be seen?” asked Cosmo captiously, glancing at himself in the mirror as though the crisis through which he had passed in the last three or four minutes could have distorted his face. Spire made no answer. The sound of that laugh had made him lose his conventional bearing; while Cosmo wondered what had happened to that imbecile, and glared at him suspiciously.

“Give me my coat,” he said at last. “I am going downstairs.”

This broke the spell, and Spire, getting into motion, regained his composure.

“Noisy company down there, sir. I thought you might not like it.”

Cosmo felt a sudden longing to hear noise, lots of it, senseless, loud, common, absurd noise; noise loud enough to prevent one from thinking, the sort of noise that would cause one to become, as it were, insensible.

“What do you want?” he asked savagely of Spire, who was hovering at his back.

“I am ready to help you with your coat, sir,” said Spire, in an apathetic voice. He had been profoundly shocked. After his master had gone out, slamming the door behind him, he busied himself with a stony face in putting the room to rights before he blew out the candles, and left it to get his supper.

“Didn’t you advise me this morning to go to Livorno?” asked Cosmo, falling heavily into the chair. Dr. Martel was already at the table, and, except that he had changed his boots for silk stockings and shoes, he might not have moved from there all the afternoon.

“Livorno,” repeated that strange man. “Did I? Yes. The road along the Riviera di Levante is delightful for any person sensible to the beauties of Italian landscape.” He paused with a sour expression at the noise of voices filling the room, and muttered that, no doubt, Cantelucci found that sort of thing pay, but that the place was becoming impossible.

Cosmo was just thinking that there was not half enough uproar there. The naval officers seemed strangely subdued that evening. The same old lieutenant with sunken cheeks and a sharp nose, in the same shabby uniform, was at the head of the table. Cantelucci, wearing a long-skirted maroon coat, now glided about the room, unobtrusive and vigilant. His benefactor beckoned to him.

“You would know where to find a man with four good horses for the signore’s carriage?” he asked; and accepting Cantelucci’s low bow as an affirmative, addressed himself to Cosmo. “The road’s perfectly safe. The country’s full of Austrian troops.”

“I think I would prefer to go by sea,” said Cosmo, who had not thought of making any arrangements for the journey. Instantly Cantelucci glided away, while the doctor emitted a grunt and applied himself to his dinner. Cosmo thought desperately. “Oh, yes, the sea, why not by sea, away from everybody.” He had been rolling and bumping on the roads, good, bad and indifferent, in dust or mud, meeting in inns ladies and gentlemen for days and days between Paris and Genoa, and for a moment he was fascinated by the notion of a steady gliding progress in company of three or four bronzed sailors over a blue sea in sight of a picturesque coast of rocks and hills crowded with pines, with opening valleys, with white villages, and purple promontories of lovely shape. It was like a dream which lasted till the doctor was heard suddenly saying: “I think I could find somebody that would take your travelling carriage off your hands”—and the awakening came with an inward recoil of all his being, as if before a vision of irrevocable consequences. The doctor lowered his eyelids. “He is changed,” he said to himself. “Oh, yes, he is changed.” This, however, did not prevent him from feeling irritated by Cosmo’s lack of response to the offer to dispose of his travelling carriage.

“There are many people that would consider themselves lucky to have such an offer made to them,” he remarked, after a period of silence. “It is not so easy at this time to get rid of a travelling carriage; nor yet to have an opportunity to hire a dependable man with four good horses, if you want to go by land. I mean at a time like this, when anything may happen any day.”

“I am sure I am very much obliged to you,” said Cosmo, “but I am really in no hurry.”

The doctor took notice of Cosmo’s languid attitude and the untouched plate before him.

“The trouble is that you don’t seem to have any aim at all. Isn’t that it?”

“Yes. I confess,” said Cosmo carelessly. “I think I want a rest.”

“Well, Mr. Latham, you had better see that you get it, then. This place isn’t restful, it is merely dull. And then suppose you were suddenly to perceive an aim, such, for instance, as a visit to Elba—you may be too late if you linger unduly. You know you are not likely to see a specimen like that one over there again in your lifetime. And even he may not be with us very long.”

“You seem very positive about that,” said Cosmo, looking at his interlocutor searchingly. “This is the third or fourth time that I hear that sort of allusion from you. Have you any special information?”

“Yes, of a sort. It has been my lot to hear much of what is said in high places, and the nature of my occupation has given me much practice in appreciating what is said.”

“In high places!” interjected Cosmo.

“And in low too,” retorted the doctor a little impatiently, “if that is the distinction you have in your mind, Mr. Latham. However, I told you I have been in Vienna quite recently, and I have heard something there.”

“From Prince Talleyrand?” was Cosmo’s stolid suggestion.

The doctor smiled acidly. “Not a bad guess. I did hear something at Prince Talleyrand’s. I heard it from Montrond. You know who I mean?”

“Never heard of him. Who is he?”

“Never heard of Montrond? Oh, I forgot, you have been shut up in that tight island of ours. Monsieur Montrond has the advantage to live near the rose. You understand me? He is the intimate companion to the prince. Has been for many years. The prince told somebody once that he liked Montrond because he was not ‘excessively’ scrupulous. That just paints the man for you. I was talking with Monsieur Montrond about Bonaparte’s future—and I was not trying to be unkind either. I pointed out that one could hardly expect him to settle down if the French Government were not made to pay him the money guaranteed under the Treaty. He could see the moment when he would find himself without a penny. That’s enough to make any human being restive. He was bound to try and do something. A man must live, I said. And Montrond looks at me sideways, and says deliberately: ‘Oh, here we don’t see the necessity.’ You understand that after a hint like this I dropped the subject. It’s a point of view like another, eh, Mr. Latham?”

Cosmo was impressed. “I heard last night,” he said, “that he is taking precautions for his personal safety.”

“He remembered, perhaps, what happened to a certain Duc d’Enghien, a young man who obviously didn’t take precautions. So you heard that story? Well, in Livorno you will hear many sorts of stories. Livorno is an exciting place, and an excellent point to start from for a visit to Elba, which would be a great memory for your old age. And if you happen to observe anything remarkable there, I would thank you to drop me a line, care of Cantelucci. You see, I have put some money into a deal in oil, and I don’t know how it is, everything in the world, even a little twopenny affair like that, is affected by this feeling of suspense that man’s presence gives rise to: hopes, plans, affections, love affairs. If I were you, Mr. Latham, I would certainly go to Livorno.” He waited a little before he got up, muttering something about having a lot of pen-work to do, and went out, Cantelucci hastening to open the door for him.

Cosmo remained passive in his chair. The room emptied itself gradually, and there was not even a servant left in it when Cosmo rose in his turn. He went back to his room, threw a few pieces of wood on the fire and sat down. He felt as if lost in a strange world.

He doubted whether he ought not to have called that day at the palace, if only to say good-bye. And suddenly all the occurrences and even words of the day before assailed his memory. The morning call, the mulatto girl, the sunshine in Madame de Montevesso’s boudoir, the seduction of her voice, the emotional appeal of her story, had stirred him to the depths of his soul. Where was the man who could have imagined the existence of a being of such splendid humanity, with such a voice, with such amazing harmony of aspect, expression, gesture—with such a face in this gross world of mortals in which Lady Jane and Mrs. R.’s daughters counted for the most exquisite products offered to the love of men? And yet Cosmo remembered now, that even while all his senses had been thrown into confusion by the first sight of Madame de Montevesso, he had felt dimly that she was no stranger, that he had seen her glory before: the presence, the glance, the lips. He did not connect that dim recognition with the child Adèle. No child could have promised a woman like this. It was rather like the awed recollection of a prophetic vision. And it had been in Latham Hall—but not in a dream: he was certain no man ever found the premonition of such a marvel in the obscure promptings of slumbering flesh. And it was not in a vision of his own; such visions were for artists, for inspired seers. She must have been foretold to him in some picture he had seen in Latham Hall, where one came on pictures (mostly of the Italian school) in unexpected places, on landings, at the end of dark corridors, in spare bedrooms. A luminous oval face on the dark background—the noble full-length woman, stepping out of the narrow frame with long draperies held by jewelled clasps and girdle, with pearls on head and bosom, carrying a book and pen (or was it a palm?), and—yes! he saw it plainly with terror—with her left breast pierced by a dagger. He saw it there plainly as if the blow had been struck before his eyes. The released hilt seemed to vibrate yet, while the eyes looked straight at him, profound, unconscious, in miraculous tranquillity.

Terror-struck, as if at the discovery of a crime, he jumped up trembling in every limb. He had a horror of the room, of being alone within its four bare walls, on which there were no pictures, except that awful one which seemed to hang in the air before his eyes. Cosmo felt that he must get away from it. He snatched up his cloak and hat and fled into the corridor. The hour was late and everything was very still. He did not see as much as a flitting shadow on the bare rough walls of the unfinished palace awaiting the decoration of marbles and bronzes that would never cover its nakedness now. The dwelling of the Grazianis stood as dumb and cold in all its lofty depths as at that desolate hour of the dreadful siege when its owner lay dead of hunger at the foot of the great flight of stairs. It was only in the hall below that Cosmo caught from behind one of the closed doors faint, almost ghostly, murmurs of disputing voices. The two hanging lanterns could not light up that grandly planned cavern in all its extent, but Cosmo made out the dim shape of the elderly lieutenant sitting all alone and perfectly still against the wall, with a bottle of wine before him. By the time he had reached the pavement Cosmo had mastered his trembling and had steadied his thoughts. He wanted to keep away from that house for hours, for hours. He glanced right and left, hesitating. In the whole town he knew only the way to the Palazzo and the way to the port. He took the latter direction. He walked by the faint starlight falling into the narrow streets resembling lofty unroofed corridors, as if the whole town had been one palace, recognising on his way the massive shape of one or two jutting balconies he remembered seeing before, and also a remarkable doorway, the arch of which was held up by bowed giants with flowing beards, like two captive sons of the god of the sea.