“I hear that things are not altogether as we could wish,” said the gentleman in an evening dress; “but I hope, and should think, only annoyances.”
“Dangers,” said Berwick, “and great.”
“How so?”
“Well, we have invasion threatening us without and insurrection within,” said Berwick. “We might, though it is doubtful, successfully encounter one of these perils, but their united action must be fatal.”
“All this has come suddenly,” said the gentleman. “In the summer you had no fear, and our people wrote to us that we might be perfectly tranquil.”
“Just so,” said Berwick. “If we had met a month ago, I should have told you the same thing. A month ago the revolution seemed lifeless, penniless; without a future, without a resource. They had no money, no credit, no men. At present, quietly but regularly, they are assembling by thousands on our frontiers; thy have to our knowledge received two large consignments of small arms, and apparently have unlimited credit with the trade, both in Birmingham and Liége; they have even artillery; every thing is paid for in coin or in good bills—and, worst of all, they have a man, the most consummate soldier in Europe. I thought he was at New York, and was in hopes he would never have recrossed the Atlantic—but I know that he passed through Florence a fortnight ago, and I have seen a man who says he spoke to him at Narni.”
“The Italian government must stop all this,” said the gentleman.
“They do not stop it,” said Berwick. “The government of his holiness has made every representation to them: we have placed in their hands indubitable evidence of the illegal proceedings that are taking place and of the internal dangers we experience in consequence of their exterior movements. But they do nothing: it is even believed that the royal troops are joining the insurgents, and Garibaldi is spouting with impunity in every balcony of Florence.”
“You may depend upon it that our government is making strong representations to the government of Florence.”
“I come from Paris and elsewhere,” said Berwick, with animation and perhaps a degree of impatience. “I have seen everybody there, and I have heard every thing. It is not representations that are wanted from your government; it is something of a different kind.”