"When does the attack take place, signor?"
"To-morrow, at midnight. We will burn a light at St. Eufemio that will astonish the good citizens of Messina, and scare Fata Morgana in her ocean palace. You are on your way to Palermo?"
I bowed.
"Say, when you get there, that Castelguelfo is in league with Regnier, has burned the grand bailiff, and hoisted the standard of Guiseppe of Naples: cospetto! the cross of the iron crown will outweigh the star of Constantine!"
"Success to the expedition, signori," said I, drinking to conceal my anger and confusion. "Faith! this is quite a revival of that ancient feud, of which the improvisatori sing so much."
"And long will they sing of the diabolical treachery of the Alfieri."
"Signor, I would gladly hear the relation."
"You shall, in a few words. You have heard of the famous fighting Dominican Campanella, who, in 1590, raised the banner of revolt in the Calabrias: my ancestor, Barone Amadeo, disgusted by Spanish misrule, joined him with three hundred men-at-arms; but these were all defeated and slaughtered by the followers of the then Visconte Santugo, on the same field of Maida where you so lately vanquished Regnier. Then commenced the quarrel between the Guelfi and the Alfieri; which, though we never came to blows, has survived for two centuries, and has settled down into coldness, mistrust, and jealousy, intriguing at court and petty squabbling at home. We are old-fashioned people here; but France holds out civilization and regeneration to us. Well, Messer Amadeo was defeated, and Santugo gave his castle to the flames, so that the Wolf of Amato might have nowhere to lay his head. An outcast, deserted by his followers and abandoned by all, he wandered long in the wild forest of St. Eufemio, until, reduced to the last extremities of hunger and despair, he resolved to throw himself upon the generosity of his triumphant enemy; and knocking at the gate of the castle of Santugo, craved the insolent porter to admit him to the visconte's presence. He was absent, fighting against Campanella; but Theodelinde of Bova, his young wife, resided at the castle during his campaign.
"Gaunt, from long continued misery, overgrown with a mass of beard and hair—clad in the skins of his namesake the wolf instead of the knightly Milan steel, and grasping a knotted staff in lieu of the bright-bladed falchion of Ferrara—Messer Amadeo had more the aspect of an ancient satyr than a Neapolitan cavalier.
"'Madonna mia!" cried Theodelinde, with dismay, 'Who art thou?'