"Old buffer's dotty," whispered the Jew to his neighbor, tapping his head significantly.
The musical gentleman nodded.
"Let's hear what it's all about, anyhow," muttered the ice-cream vendor, tapping the table.
There was silence at once. They all turned toward the Count, and waited.
He had not been disappointed in their silence. It seemed to him like the prudent reserve of true conspirators. They wished to hear his case, and, as yet, he had only reached the preamble. Good! they should hear it.
"You all know that I was arrested and thrown into prison because I broke what they choose to call my parole—because, after the sentence of banishment had been passed upon me, I returned to my native country, and took part once more in the counsels of our Order. But you have yet to learn this, comrades; you have yet to learn that I was betrayed, foully, wilfully—betrayed into the clutches of the Italian police. Before my very eyes papers of our society incriminating me were placed in the hand of our enemy, Signor Villesco, by one who had sworn our oaths in the first degree and worn our flower. At your hands I call for vengeance upon my betrayers—vengeance upon Adrienne di Cartuccio, calling herself Lady St. Maurice, vengeance upon her husband, her family, and all belonging to her. It is the first decree of our Order, which all of you have sworn to, and I stand within my rights. Answer, comrades of the Order of the White Hyacinth! For your sake I have languished five-and-twenty years in a Roman prison. With you it rests to sweeten my death. By your oaths, I charge you, give me vengeance!"
His eyes were flashing, and his features, for the first time, were convulsed with anxiety. What meant this unsympathetic silence, this lack of enthusiasm? He looked from one to another of their stolid, puzzled faces. Where were the outstretched hands, the deep solemn oaths, the cry for lots to be drawn, which he had confidently expected? Their silence was driving him mad. Suddenly the ice-cream vendor spoke.
"What is it you want, gaffer?" he asked, without removing his pipe from his mouth. "Cursed if I can see what you're driving at, or any of us, for that matter."
"What is it I want?" he cried passionately. "The life of my betrayer, or such a mark of my vengeance as will make her rue the day she sent one of your Order to work out his life, a miserable captive, in a prison cell. Is it not clear what I want? Speak, all of you! Do you grudge me this thing? Do you hesitate?"
The vendor of ice cream constituted himself the spokesman of the little party. He knocked the dead ashes from his pipe, and leisurely refilled it. The little old man at the bottom of the table was shaking with anxiety. The thunderbolt quivered in the air.