The company consisted of four men. The chair at the head of the table had been left vacant for the Professor. On the right sat Andrew Martello, an anglicized Italian, and a vendor of ice cream; on the left was Pietro Muratti, the proprietor of an itinerant musical instrument. These were the only two, besides the Professor, who had any pretense to Italian blood. The other two were a French barber and a Jew pawnbroker.
The light was purposely dim, and the Count's eyes were bad. Besides, his long confinement, and the great though suppressed excitement under which he was laboring, had to a certain extent confused his judgment. He saw a mean room, and four men only, when he had dreamed of a chamber in some great house and an important assemblage; but, disappointing though this was, it did not seem fatal to his hopes. Let but these four men be faithful to their oaths, and he, who had served their cause so well, could demand as a right the boon he craved. He strove earnestly to read their faces, but the light was bad and his eyes were dim. He must wait. Their voices would show him what manner of men they were. After all, why should he doubt for a moment? Men who had remained faithful to a dying and deserted cause, must needs be men of strength and honorable men. The very fewness of their numbers proved it, else why should they too not have fallen away. He would banish all doubt. He would speak when his time came with all confidence.
The Professor introduced him with all solemnity, casting an appealing glance at each in turn, as though begging them to accept this matter seriously. There was just a slender thread of hope still, and he did not intend to abandon it.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I have the honor to present to you the Count Leonardo di Marioni, a martyr, as you all know, to our cause. Count Marioni was, only last week, released from an imprisonment which has lasted for five-and-twenty years."
They all looked at him curiously—a little compassionately, but none of them were quite sure how to acknowledge the salutation. The Jew alone stood up and made a shuffling little bow; the others remained silent except the little French barber, who murmured something about pleasure and acquaintance, which the Professor promptly frowned down. The Count, who had remained standing, advanced to the bottom of the table, and, laying his trembling hands upon it, spoke:
"Gentlemen and Brothers of the Order of the White Hyacinth," he said solemnly, "I am glad to meet you."
The Frenchman and the Italian Muratti exchanged expressive winks. The vendor of ice cream growled across the table for the bird's-eye, and commenced leisurely filling his pipe, while the Jew ventured upon a feeble "hear, hear."
"My name is doubtless known to you," the Count continued, "and the story of my life, which, I am proud to remember, is closely interwoven with the history of your Order. Your faces, alas! are strange to me. My old comrades, whom, I had hoped to meet, and whose sympathy I had counted on, are no more. I feel somewhat as though I had stepped out of the shadows of a bygone life, and everything is a little strange to me. I have grown unaccustomed even to speech itself. You must pardon me if I do not make myself understood with ease. The past seems very, very far away."
By this time all the pipes were lit, and the mugs were filled. The smoke hung round the little assembly in a faint cloud, and the atmosphere was growing dense. The Count looked a little puzzled, but he only hesitated for a moment. He remembered that he was in England, and the habits of foreigners were not easy to grow accustomed to. It was a small matter, although he wished that the odor of the tobacco had not been quite so rank. When he resumed speaking, however, it was forgotten in a moment.
"I must ask you to bear with me in a certain confession which I am about to make," he continued. "I am not here to-night to inquire or in any way to concern myself in the political prospects of our Order. Alas! that the time should come when I should find myself calmly acknowledging that my country's sorrows were mine no longer. But, comrades, I must claim from you your generous consideration. Five-and-twenty years is a long time. I have lost my touch of history. My memory—I must confess it—my memory itself is weak. I do not doubt that, small though your numbers be, you are nobly carrying on the work in which I, too, once bore a part. I do not doubt but that you are laboring still in the glorious cause of liberty. But I am with you no longer; my work on earth for others, such as it has been, is accomplished. I do not come to aid or to join you. Alas! that I should say it, I, Leonardo di Marioni, whose life was once so closely bound up with your prosperity as the breath of a man is to his body. But it is so. I am stranded upon the wreck of my past, and I can only call upon you with a far-distant voice for my own salvation."