"And who is this lodger, man?" he cried.
"Only a poor Hungarian country noble," replied Bandini in a more cajoling tone. "A youth! a very youth! a poor unsuspecting youth! He has come, like all the other nobles of the land, great and small, to obey the call of her they call their King, to attend this Diet summoned at Presburg; and he occupies my other rooms with his servant—a rustic!—a mere rustic!—a rude untutored rustic!"
"It was ill done, Bandini," continued the stranger, with still evident marks of discontent. "A lodger in the house, when you must know that I need privacy! It was ill done, I tell you."
The old man only muttered something between his teeth by way of a reply.
"Have a care, man," resumed his visitor, "how you juggle with me in this matter. You are richly paid by my employers for the support you give me, and the concealment your house affords; but should evil befall us—be it through your treachery or your imprudence, it matters not—per Jovem, the evil shall fall a hundred-fold upon your own head. I swear it to you; and you know I am a man to keep my word."
"Jehovah! here's a turmoil about the mere miserable lodging of a poor youth!" growled the old man doggedly, although the rapid passing of a long skeleton finger over the tip of his huge nose betrayed a certain degree of nervous agitation.
"Master Bandini," interrupted the stranger, unheeding him, "I have a word to speak with you—and one that nearly concerns yourself, Master Bandini—before we proceed further in business."
"Look ye!" he pursued, in a more indifferent tone, throwing himself down on to a chair, and crossing his legs composedly, but fixing the man called Bandini at the same time with his keen eye. "Look ye, friend druggist, physician, usurer, miser, secret agent, spy—or whatever other name you bear in designation, avocation, character, or creed"—and he laid a slight emphasis on the word—"there are no friends so sure as those who are convinced we know then thoroughly—a right understanding is sympathy, amico mio, and sympathy is bond and union."
The old man looked through his beetling brows at his visitor without any evidence of trouble; but he ceased irritating the tip of his nose only to twitch more nervously at the sleeves of his coat, as if to give himself an air of composure and dignity by adjusting them, as a modern fop might do by pulling up his shirt-collar.
"Think you I have forgotten," continued the stranger with a slight sneer, "that when we first met in Italy—no matter upon what business, or to what intent—Master Bandini bore the name of Israeli, and that, when forced to leave that country—persecuted, as he himself would say, for some little matter of flagrant usury, and mayhap also of a drug or two that lulled some rich old uncle to a sleep from which he woke not, and made a spendthrift debtor his heir—he returned to the land of his birth, I will not say of his fathers, and, for reasons good, under another name and a foreign guise, thinking that the name of Israel, spite of its adopted termination, smacked somewhat too notoriously of his origin, his Jewish origin, Master Bandini?"