"It's about that, sir. I knew where it came from by the colour and the monogram."
"Well?"
Bruno began to look frightened, and then in a louder voice, that bubbled out of his mouth like water from the neck of a bottle, he said:
"Tell you the truth, sir, people are talking about you."
"What are they saying, Bruno?"
"Saying?... Ever heard the proverb, 'Sun in the eyes, the battle lost'? Sun in the eyes—that's what they're saying, sir."
"So they're saying that, are they?"
"They are. And doesn't it look like it, sir? You'll allow it looks like it, anyway. When you started the Republic, sir, the people had hopes of you. But a month is gone and you haven't done a thing."
David Rossi, with head down, continued to pace to and fro.
"'Patience,' I'm saying. 'Go slow and sure,' says I. That's all right, sir, but the Government is going fast enough. Forty thousand men called out to keep the people quiet, and when the bread-tax begins on the first of the month the blessed saints know what will happen. Next week we hold our meeting in the Coliseum. You called it yourself, sir, yet they're laying odds you won't be there. Where will you be? In the house of a bad woman?"