“Simply, that they have persuaded you that this state is the hotbed of revolutionists; that your own means of security and repression are unequal to the emergency; that disaffection exists in the army; and that, whether for the maintenance of the Government or your safety, you have only one course remaining.”
“Which is—”
“To call in the Austrians.”
“Per Bacco! it is exactly what they have advised. How did you come to know it? Who is the traitor at the Council-board?”
“I wish I could tell you the name of one who was not such. Why, your Highness, these fellows are not your Ministers, except in so far as they are paid by you. They are Metternich's people; they receive their appointments from Vienna, and are only accountable to the cabinet held at Schönbrunn. If wise and moderate counsels prevailed here, if our financial measures prospered, if the people were happy and contented, how long, think you, would Lombardy submit to be ruled by the rod and the bayonet? Do you imagine that you will be suffered to give an example to the Peninsula of a good administration?”
“But so it is,” broke in the Prince; “I defy any man to assert the opposite. The country is prosperous, the people are contented, the laws justly administered, and, I hesitate not to say, myself as popular as any sovereign of Europe.”
“And I tell your Highness, just as distinctly, that the country is ground down with taxation, even to export duties on the few things we have to export; that the people are poor to the very verge of starvation; that if they do not take to the highways as brigands, it is because some traditions as honest men yet survive amongst them; that the laws only exist as an agent of tyranny, arrest and imprisonment being at the mere caprice of the authorities. Nor is there a means by which an innocent man can demand his trial, and insist on being confronted with his accuser. Your jails are full, crowded to a state of pestilence with supposed political offenders, men that, in a free country, would be at large, toiling industriously for their families, and whose opinions could never be dangerous, if not festering in the foul air of a dungeon. And as to your own popularity, all I say is, don't walk in the Piazza at Carrara after dusk. No, nor even at noonday.”
“And you dare to speak thus to me, Stubber!” said the Prince, his face covered with a deadly pallor as he spoke, and his white lips trembling, but less in passion than in fear.
“And why not, sir? Of what value could such a man as I am be to your service, if I were not to tell you what you 'll never hear from others,—the plain, simple truth? Is it not clear enough that if I only thought of my own benefit, I 'd say whatever you'd like best to hear?—I'd tell you, like Landelli, that the taxes were well paid, or say, as Cerreccio did t'other day, that your army would do credit to any state in Europe, when he well knew at the time that the artillery was in mutiny from arrears of pay, and the cavalry horses dying from short rations!”
“I am well weary of all this,” said the Duke, with a sigh. “If the half of what I hear of my kingdom every day be but true, my lot in life is worse than a galley-slave's. One assures me that I am bankrupt; another calls me a vassal of Austria; a third makes me out a Papal spy; and you aver that if I venture into the streets of my own town, in the midst of my own people, I am almost sure to be assassinated!”