"The difficulty," observed Ubaldini, "is that every point can be turned against you from first to last. I am afraid that even my little stratagem has done no good. I wished to find out whether the confession really existed, and I thought it best that you should be in ignorance of the steps I took and of the result I obtained, in case you should be called upon to swear to anything in a possible action brought by you for defamation. The less an innocent man knows of the facts of a case, when he is on his oath, the better it generally turns out for him. The first thing to be done is to find the dealer with whom you negotiated for the purchase of the manuscript. His evidence will be the strongest we can get. Of course, even to that they will answer that you would not be so foolish as to write what looked like an account of a genuine transaction without lending an air of truth to it, in case of necessity, by actually making inquiries about it. If it is found that the prices named in your letters agree with those asked by the dealer, they will say that you cleverly chose a very valuable work, and determined to be guided by the value of it, in appraising the letter you held. If the prices did not agree, they would say that even if the transaction were genuine, you had conducted it dishonestly; but then, as a matter of fact, the discovery was a good proof that it was a mere sham. Of course, too, you will have friends, like the Signor Marchese here present, who will swear to your previous character; but you must not forget that in a case like this the great body of educated public and social opinion is with the woman rather than the man."
"In other words," said Ghisleri, with a laugh, "I am to stand my trial for extortion, and am very likely to be convicted. You are not very encouraging, Signor Ubaldini, but I suppose you will find a word to say in my defence before everything is over."
"I will do my best," answered the young lawyer, thoughtfully. "I would like to know where this confession is. One thing is quite certain: if it had got into the hands of a dishonest person, Donna Adele would have heard of it before now, and would have tried to buy it, as she did try to get it from the maid Lucia, according to her own account, and from me. In the meanwhile, I will go and examine the dealer. Will you kindly give me his name and address."
Ghisleri wrote both on a card and Ubaldini went away. Before Ghisleri and San Giacinto had been alone together half an hour, he came back, looking rather pale and excited.
"It is most unfortunate," he exclaimed. "The devil is certainly in this business. The man was buried yesterday. He died of apoplexy two days ago."
"Nothing surpasses the stupidity of that!" cried San Giacinto, angrily. "Why could not the idiot have lived a fortnight longer?"
Ghisleri said nothing, but he saw what importance both his friend and the lawyer had attached to the dead man's testimony. There was little hope that his clerk would be able to say anything in Ghisleri's favour. He had of course only spoken with the dealer himself, generally in a private room and without witnesses. He began to fear that his case was even worse than he had at first supposed.
"The best possible defence, in my opinion," said Ubaldini, "is to tell your own story and compare it, inch by inch, with theirs. I believe that, after all, yours will seem by far the more probable in the eyes of any court of justice. Then we will question Donna Adele's sanity, and bring a couple of celebrated authorities to prove that people who use morphia often go mad and have fixed ideas. Donna Adele's delusion is that you are the possessor of her confession. If we cannot prove that it has been all this time in the hands of some one else, we may at least be able to show that there is no particular reason why it should have been in yours, that you are certainly not in need of fifty thousand francs, and that, so far as any one knows, you are not the man to try and get it in this way if you were. We will do the best we can. I got a man off scot free the other day who had murdered his brother in the presence of three witnesses. I proved that one was half-witted, that the second was drunk, and that the third could not possibly have been present at all, because he ought to have been somewhere else. That was a much harder case than this. The jury shed tears of pity for my ill-used client."
"I will do without the tears," said Ghisleri, with a smile, "provided they will see the truth this time."
San Giacinto kept his word, and refused to leave Ghisleri's lodging that night, sending Bonifazio to his house for clothes and necessaries, and ordering fresh horses and another coachman and footman to replace those that had waited all day. He distinctly objected to cabs, he said, because they were always too small for him; and if Ghisleri was to be arrested, he intended to drive with him to the prison in order to give bail for him immediately. And so he did. On the following day Rome was surprised by a spectacle unique in the recollection of its inhabitants, high or low. The largest of the large open carriages belonging to Casa San Giacinto was seen rolling solemnly through the city, bearing Pietro Ghisleri, the Marchese di San Giacinto himself, and two policemen, who looked very uncomfortable as they sat, bolt upright, side by side, with their backs to the horses. A few hours later, the same carriage appeared again, Pietro and the giant being still in it, but without the officers of the law. San Giacinto insisted upon driving his friend six times round the Villa Borghese, six times round the Pincio, and four times the length of the Corso, before taking him back at last to his lodgings.