"It won't do that anyhow." The Neapolitan rose and came across to the table. "Gentlemen, you're on the wrong tack. Conciliating the government will do no good. What we must do is to rouse the people."

"That's easier said than done; how are you going to start?"

"Fancy asking Galli that! Of course he'd start by knocking the censor on the head."

"No, indeed, I shouldn't," said Galli stoutly. "You always think if a man comes from down south he must believe in no argument but cold steel."

"Well, what do you propose, then? Sh! Attention, gentlemen! Galli has a proposal to make."

The whole company, which had broken up into little knots of twos and threes, carrying on separate discussions, collected round the table to listen. Galli raised his hands in expostulation.

"No, gentlemen, it is not a proposal; it is merely a suggestion.

It appears to me that there is a great practical danger in all this rejoicing over the new Pope. People seem to think that, because he has struck out a new line and granted this amnesty, we have only to throw ourselves--all of us, the whole of Italy--into his arms and he will carry us to the promised land. Now, I am second to no one in admiration of the Pope's behaviour; the amnesty was a splendid action."

"I am sure His Holiness ought to feel flattered----" Gra.s.sini began contemptuously.

"There, Gra.s.sini, do let the man speak!" Riccardo interrupted in his turn. "It's a most extraordinary thing that you two never can keep from sparring like a cat and dog. Get on, Galli!"

"What I wanted to say is this," continued the Neapolitan. "The Holy Father, undoubtedly, is acting with the best intentions; but how far he will succeed in carrying his reforms is another question. Just now it's smooth enough and, of course, the reactionists all over Italy will lie quiet for a month or two till the excitement about the amnesty blows over; but they are not likely to let the power be taken out of their hands without a fight, and my own belief is that before the winter is half over we shall have Jesuits and Gregorians and Sanfedists and all the rest of the crew about our ears, plotting and intriguing, and poisoning off everybody they can't bribe."

"That's likely enough."

"Very well, then; shall we wait here, meekly sending in pet.i.tions, till Lambruschini and his pack have persuaded the Grand Duke to put us bodily under Jesuit rule, with perhaps a few Austrian hussars to patrol the streets and keep us in order; or shall we forestall them and take advantage of their momentary discomfiture to strike the first blow?"

"Tell us first what blow you propose?"

"I would suggest that we start an organized propaganda and agitation against the Jesuits."

"A pamphleteering declaration of war, in fact?"

"Yes; exposing their intrigues, ferreting out their secrets, and calling upon the people to make common cause against them."

"But there are no Jesuits here to expose."

"Aren't there? Wait three months and see how many we shall have. It'll be too late to keep them out then."

"But really to rouse the town against the Jesuits one must speak plainly; and if you do that how will you evade the censorship?"

"I wouldn't evade it; I would defy it."

"You would print the pamphlets anonymously? That's all very well, but the fact is, we have all seen enough of the clandestine press to know----"

"I did not mean that. I would print the pamphlets openly, with our names and addresses, and let them prosecute us if they dare."

"The project is a perfectly mad one," Gra.s.sini exclaimed. "It is simply putting one's head into the lion's mouth out of sheer wantonness."

"Oh, you needn't be afraid!" Galli cut in sharply; "we shouldn't ask you to go to prison for our pamphlets."

"Hold your tongue, Galli!" said Riccardo. "It's not a question of being afraid; we're all as ready as you are to go to prison if there's any good to be got by it, but it is childish to run into danger for nothing.

For my part, I have an amendment to the proposal to suggest."

"Well, what is it?"

"I think we might contrive, with care, to fight the Jesuits without coming into collision with the censorship."

"I don't see how you are going to manage it."

"I think that it is possible to clothe what one has to say in so roundabout a form that----"

"That the censorship won't understand it? And then you'll expect every poor artisan and labourer to find out the meaning by the light of the ignorance and stupidity that are in him! That doesn't sound very practicable."

"Martini, what do you think?" asked the professor, turning to a broad-shouldered man with a great brown beard, who was sitting beside him.

"I think that I will reserve my opinion till I have more facts to go upon. It's a question of trying experiments and seeing what comes of them."

"And you, Sacconi?"

"I should like to hear what Signora Bolla has to say. Her suggestions are always valuable."

Everyone turned to the only woman in the room, who had been sitting on the sofa, resting her chin on one hand and listening in silence to the discussion. She had deep, serious black eyes, but as she raised them now there was an unmistakable gleam of amus.e.m.e.nt in them.

"I am afraid," she said; "that I disagree with everybody."

"You always do, and the worst of it is that you are always right,"

Riccardo put in.

"I think it is quite true that we must fight the Jesuits somehow; and if we can't do it with one weapon we must with another. But mere defiance is a feeble weapon and evasion a c.u.mbersome one. As for pet.i.tioning, that is a child's toy."

"I hope, signora," Gra.s.sini interposed, with a solemn face; "that you are not suggesting such methods as--a.s.sa.s.sination?"

Martini tugged at his big moustache and Galli sn.i.g.g.e.red outright. Even the grave young woman could not repress a smile.

"Believe me," she said, "that if I were ferocious enough to think of such things I should not be childish enough to talk about them. But the deadliest weapon I know is ridicule. If you can once succeed in rendering the Jesuits ludicrous, in making people laugh at them and their claims, you have conquered them without bloodshed."

"I believe you are right, as far as that goes," Fabrizi said; "but I don't see how you are going to carry the thing through."

"Why should we not be able to carry it through?" asked Martini. "A satirical thing has a better chance of getting over the censorship difficulty than a serious one; and, if it must be cloaked, the average reader is more likely to find out the double meaning of an apparently silly joke than of a scientific or economic treatise."

"Then is your suggestion, signora, that we should issue satirical pamphlets, or attempt to run a comic paper? That last, I am sure, the censorship would never allow."

"I don't mean exactly either. I believe a series of small satirical leaflets, in verse or prose, to be sold cheap or distributed free about the streets, would be very useful. If we could find a clever artist who would enter into the spirit of the thing, we might have them ill.u.s.trated."

"It's a capital idea, if only one could carry it out; but if the thing is to be done at all it must be well done. We should want a first-cla.s.s satirist; and where are we to get him?"

"You see," added Lega, "most of us are serious writers; and, with all respect to the company, I am afraid that a general attempt to be humorous would present the spectacle of an elephant trying to dance the tarantella."

"I never suggested that we should all rush into work for which we are unfitted. My idea was that we should try to find a really gifted satirist--there must be one to be got somewhere in Italy, surely--and offer to provide the necessary funds. Of course we should have to know something of the man and make sure that he would work on lines with which we could agree."

"But where are you going to find him? I can count up the satirists of any real talent on the fingers of one hand; and none of them are available. Giusti wouldn't accept; he is fully occupied as it is. There are one or two good men in Lombardy, but they write only in the Milanese dialect----"