“What a strange creature that is; and what an odd affection for mountebanks!” said Riccardo, coming back to his visitors.
“Case of a fellow-feeling, I should think,” said Martini; “the man's a mountebank himself, if ever I saw one.”
“I wish I could think he was only that,” Fabrizi interposed, with a grave face. “If he is a mountebank I am afraid he's a very dangerous one.”
“Dangerous in what way?”
“Well, I don't like those mysterious little pleasure trips that he is so fond of taking. This is the third time, you know; and I don't believe he has been in Pisa at all.”
“I suppose it is almost an open secret that it's into the mountains he goes,” said Sacconi. “He has hardly taken the trouble to deny that he is still in relations with the smugglers he got to know in the Savigno affair, and it's quite natural he should take advantage of their friendship to get his leaflets across the Papal frontier.”
“For my part,” said Riccardo; “what I wanted to talk to you about is this very question. It occurred to me that we could hardly do better than ask Rivarez to undertake the management of our own smuggling. That press at Pistoja is very inefficiently managed, to my thinking; and the way the leaflets are taken across, always rolled in those everlasting cigars, is more than primitive.”
“It has answered pretty well up till now,” said Martini contumaciously. He was getting wearied of hearing Galli and Riccardo always put the Gadfly forward as a model to copy, and inclined to think that the world had gone well enough before this “lackadaisical buccaneer” turned up to set everyone to rights.
“It has answered so far well that we have been satisfied with it for want of anything better; but you know there have been plenty of arrests and confiscations. Now I believe that if Rivarez undertook the business for us, there would be less of that.”
“Why do you think so?”