Whether Mr. Ferris’s curiosity was piqued, and feeling himself on the safe side of his visitor he meant to know why he had come on such an errand, or whether he had some kindlier motive, he could hardly have told himself, but he said, “I’m very sorry. Perhaps there is something else in which I could be of use to you.”
“Ah, I hardly know,” cried Don Ippolito. “I really had a kind of hope in coming to your excellency.”
“I am not an excellency,” interrupted Mr. Ferris, conscientiously.
“Many excuses! But now it seems a mere bestiality. I was so ignorant about the other matter that doubtless I am also quite deluded in this.”
“As to that, of course I can’t say,” answered Mr. Ferris, “but I hope not.”
“Why, listen, signore!” said Don Ippolito, placing his hand over that pocket in which he kept his linen handkerchief. “I had something that it had come into my head to offer your honored government for its advantage in this deplorable rebellion.”
“Oh,” responded Mr. Ferris with a falling countenance. He had received so many offers of help for his honored government from sympathizing foreigners. Hardly a week passed but a sabre came clanking up his dim staircase with a Herr Graf or a Herr Baron attached, who appeared in the spotless panoply of his Austrian captaincy or lieutenancy, to accept from the consul a brigadier-generalship in the Federal armies, on condition that the consul would pay his expenses to Washington, or at least assure him of an exalted post and reimbursement of all outlays from President Lincoln as soon as he arrived. They were beautiful men, with the complexion of blonde girls; their uniforms fitted like kid gloves; the pale blue, or pure white, or huzzar black of their coats was ravishingly set off by their red or gold trimmings; and they were hard to make understand that brigadiers of American birth swarmed at Washington, and that if they went thither, they must go as soldiers of fortune at their own risk. But they were very polite; they begged pardon when they knocked their scabbards against the consul’s furniture, at the door they each made him a magnificent obeisance, said “Servus!” in their great voices, and were shown out by the old Marina, abhorrent of their uniforms and doubtful of the consul’s political sympathies. Only yesterday she had called him up at an unwonted hour to receive the visit of a courtly gentleman who addressed him as Monsieur le Ministre, and offered him at a bargain ten thousand stand of probably obsolescent muskets belonging to the late Duke of Parma. Shabby, hungry, incapable exiles of all nations, religions, and politics beset him for places of honor and emolument in the service of the Union; revolutionists out of business, and the minions of banished despots, were alike willing to be fed, clothed, and dispatched to Washington with swords consecrated to the perpetuity of the republic.
“I have here,” said Don Ippolito, too intent upon showing whatever it was he had to note the change in the consul’s mood, “the model of a weapon of my contrivance, which I thought the government of the North could employ successfully in cases where its batteries were in danger of capture by the Spaniards.”
“Spaniards? Spaniards? We have no war with Spain!” cried the consul.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Don Ippolito made haste to explain, “but those of South America being Spanish by descent”—