We spent the next five days in company with these strange fellow-lodgers, and more than once it gave me an uncanny feeling to turn in the midst of Mr. Fett's prattle and, catching the eye of Marc'antonio or Stephanu as they sat and listened with absolute gravity, to reflect on the desperate business we were here to do. We went about the city openly, no man suspecting us. On the day after our arrival we discovered the Prince Camillo's quarters. The Republic had lodged him, with a small retinue, in the Palazzo Verde, a handsome building (though not to be reckoned among the statelier palaces of the city), with a front on the Via Balbi, and a garden enclosed by high walls, around which ran the discreetest of vicoli. One of the Dorias, so tradition said, had built it to house a mistress, early in the seventeenth century. I doubt not the Prince Camillo found comfortable quarters there. For the rest, he had begun to enjoy himself after the fashion he had learnt in Brussels, returning to dissipation with an undisguised zest. The Genoese—themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if not virtuous—made less than a nine days' wonder of him, he was so engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for the fleshpots. There was talk that in a few days he would make formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the Bank of Saint George. Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the shops, the theatres. His very publicity baulked us. We tracked him daily—his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a chance to surprise him alone. His eyes, which rested nowhere, never detected us.
We hunted him together, not consulting Marc'antonio and Stephanu, but rather agreeing to keep them out of the way. Indeed I divined that the Princess's anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to her fear of these two and what they might intend. For my part, I watched them of an evening, at Messer' Fazio's board, expecting some sign of jealousy. But it appeared that they had resigned her to me, and were content to be excluded from our counsels.
Another thing puzzled me. Public as the Prince made himself, he was never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest Domenico. Yet—ame damnee, or master devil, whichever he might be—I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him. So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde—for three days without success. But on the fourth I made a small discovery.
The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet in width, dividing its garden from the back wall of another palace (as I remember, one of the Durazzi). Halfway up this lane a narrow door broke the wall of the Palazzo Verde's garden. I had tried this door, and found it locked.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, as I turned into this lane, a middle-aged man met and passed me at the entrance, walking in a hurry. I had no proof that he came from the garden-door of the Palazzo Verde, but I thought it worthwhile to turn and follow him; which I did, keeping at a distance, until he entered a goldsmith's shop in the Strada Nuova, where presently, through the pane, I saw him talking with a customer across the counter. I retraced my steps to the lane. The door (needless to say) was closed; but behind it, not far within the garden, I heard a gentle persistent tapping, as of a hammer, and wondered what it might mean.
It spoke eloquently for the Prince Camillo's zest after pleasure that he pursued it abroad in spite of the weather, which was abominable. A searching mistral blew through the streets for four days, parching the blood, and on the night of the fourth rose to something like a hurricane. Our players fought their way against it to the theatre, only to find it empty; and returned in the lowest of spirits. The pretty Bianca was especially disconsolate.
Before dawn the gale dropped, and between eleven o'clock and noon, in a flat calm, the snow began, freezing as it fell.
The Prince Camillo did not show himself in the streets that day. But towards dusk, as we passed down the Via Roma, he drove by in an improvised sleigh with bells jingling on the necks of his horses. He was bound for the theatre, which stood at the head of the street. The Princess turned with me, and we were in time to see him alight and run up the steps, radiant, wrapped in furs, and carrying a great bouquet of pink roses, such as grow in the Genoese gardens throughout the winter.
But it appeared that, if we kept good watch on him, others had been keeping better; for, five minutes later, as we stood debating whether to follow him into the theatre, Marc'antonio and Stephanu emerged from its portico and came towards us.
"O Princess," said Marc'antonio, "we have seen him at length and had word with him. When we told him that you were here in Genoa, he looked at us for a moment like a man distraught—did he not, Stephanu?"