'Guarantee?' said Villetard, raising his brows.

'How should I know that you would not still betray me?'

'There would be our word,' Lallemant assured him.

But Vendramin, still stinging where he could, shook his head. 'I should need something more in so grave a matter.'

'I am afraid that is all that we can give you.'

'You can give me the drafts that you hold as proof of what you call my debt to you.'

On the point of answering, Lallemant suddenly checked. He sat silent and thoughtful, his eyes on the wine-glass which he was twirling by its delicate stem. Thus, until Villetard broke in impatiently: 'But why not? He has a sort of right to them once the debt is paid.'

'Once it is paid, yes,' the ambassador slowly agreed. Then, taking his resolve, he became more brisk. 'Come to me at the embassy tomorrow in the forenoon, and we will settle the terms with you.'

'You mean that you agree?' Vendramin was eager.

'I mean that I will let you know tomorrow morning.'

'I will serve you on no other terms,' Vendramin defied him.

'Well, well. We will talk of it tomorrow.'

After the Venetian had departed, Villetard expressed impatience of a procrastination for which he could discover no reason. But Lallemant postponed explanation until the two men were in their gondola, on the way back to the Madonna dell' Orto. Then, at last, he satisfied Bonaparte's envoy.

'I have my reasons, of course. Naturally I could not state them in the presence of this Venetian. Just as naturally I preferred not to state them after he had departed.'

'But why not, since Madame la Vicomtesse . . .'

Lallemant interrupted him, adopting the tone of the master towards the dilettante.

'My dear Villetard, the experience gathered in controlling as I do a considerable secret service has taught me never, unless there are very good reasons for it, to allow one secret agent to be aware of another. In the case of Lebel there are more than ordinary reasons why none of my people should be allowed to guess his real identity. It would have been impossible to have discussed this matter before the Vicomtesse without disclosing it. That is why I preferred to wait until we should be by ourselves.'

'I don't myself see what there is to discuss. This miserable barnabotto was ready to come to terms, and . . .'

Again he was interrupted. 'If you will have a little patience, my dear Villetard, you shall learn what there is to discuss.' And he disclosed how, to shield himself from the danger of assassination, Lebel employed those drafts on Vivanti's which Vendramin now asked them to surrender. 'Now, if harm should befall Lebel through my having neglected any precautions, that would be a very serious thing. I do not care about the responsibility.'

Villetard was impatient. 'If the Little Corporal doesn't get what he wants, the consequences may be still more serious. I don't care for the responsibility of that. Lebel must take his chances. He seems a man well able to take care of himself.'

'But I must consult him before accepting Vendramin's condition?'

'Why?' Villetard was vehement. 'Suppose that he opposes it? What then? Is General Bonaparte . . . Is France to forego advantages because of risks to the Citizen Lebel?' And he quoted: '"Salus populi suprema lex."'

'Yes, yes. But if Vendramin won't hear reason, I might find another man to do the work?'

'When?' barked Villetard.

'Oh, soon. I should have to look round.'

'And is the Army of Italy to wait while you look round? Name of a name! I begin to think it is fortunate I was sent to Venice. There is one thing only to be done. Duty points it out quite clearly.' His tone hardened. 'Tomorrow, you will agree to Vendramin's terms. And you will conveniently forget to mention the matter to Lebel, or to anyone else. I hope that is clear.'

'It is clear,' said Lallemant, stifling his resentment of that hectoring tone. 'But let it be also clear to you that I shall not do it until I have exhausted every attempt to constrain Vendramin without going quite so far.'

'That is legitimate,' Villetard admitted. 'But it is the utmost that I will permit.'

CHAPTER XXIV

EMANCIPATION

Firmly on the morrow Lallemant went as far as Villetard gave him leave. And Villetard himself was present to see that he went no further. For the rest Villetard loyally supported him in the assertion that they must retain the drafts in their possession, and that Vendramin must rest content with their assurance that they would not be employed to his detriment unless he himself provoked it.

Vendramin on his side was no less firm. A night's reflection had hardened him in his purpose. Unless by this act of treachery to Venice he could break the intolerable fetters in which Melville held him, he would not undertake it.

What he said to Lallemant was that without a definite guarantee he would not act; and that no guarantee would serve him short of delivery to him of the actual drafts upon his fulfilment of what was required of him.

Upon this he was actually on the point of taking his leave when Villetard intimated surrender.

'Since he sets such store by it, Lallemant, let him have his way.'

And Lallemant, venting his reluctance in a sigh, had felt constrained to yield.

When, later that day, Marc-Antoine called at the embassy to inquire whether Vendramin had been enlisted, the uncomfortable Lallemant disingenuously brushed the matter aside.

'I have no doubt,' he said, 'that he will come to it,' and he changed the subject.

The ambassador had been able to simplify the task ahead of Vendramin by putting him in communication with a survivor of the associates of Sartoni. This man procured two others who were willing to work with him. But since the fate of their predecessors went to show with what terrible risks the task was fraught, these scoundrels required very substantial emoluments.

Vendramin found the embassy accommodatingly liberal. Lallemant did not stint supplies. Not only did he furnish the necessary funds for those wages of treachery, but he made no difficulty about adding fifty ducats, as a douceur to relieve the temporary embarrassment which Vendramin had not hesitated to confess to him.

As a result, and also because driven by anxiety to obtain possession of those incriminating drafts, Vendramin went to work with zealous and assiduous diligence.

Each morning when Zanetto—the chief of the men employed—brought him a rough note of the night's labours, he would spend some hours in carefully recording the figures on the chart he had prepared to receive them.

This, however, did not prevent him from making simultaneously a fuller parade than ever of his patriotic zeal at the Palazzo Pizzamano, where he was an almost daily visitor. There was, however, little to be done just then. Hope was encouraged by the persistent rumour that although Bonaparte was now in great strength, and although the Archduke Charles at Udine was not relaxing his warlike preparations, negotiations for peace were actively on foot.

Vendramin displayed a shrewdness, which he thought that future events might well come to establish, by refusing to share this optimism. He declared that the perceptible underground activities of the French contradicted these rumours. Venice, he reminded them, was full of French agents and French propagandists, working incalculable mischief.

One day, meeting Catarin Corner at the Casa Pizzamano, he actually expressed himself with some bitterness on the subject of the comparative inertia of the inquisitors.

'The danger,' he declared, 'is perhaps more to be feared than the guns of Bonaparte. It is an invasion of ideas, creeping insidiously into the foundations of the State. It is the hope of the apostles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, that if the Venetian oligarchy is not to be destroyed by force of arms, it shall nevertheless succumb to Jacobin intrigue.'

Corner assured him that the inquisitors were by no means either indifferent or inert. Idleness on the part of the inquisitors was not to be assumed from the absence of signs of their activities. It was not the way of the Three to leave footprints. If those responsible for military measures had been one half as active, the Republic today would stand delivered of every menace.

Vendramin deplored so much secrecy at such a time. A parade of the functioning of the inquisitors must prove a salutary deterrent to enemy agents.

Pizzamano listened and approved him, and in this way Ser Leonardo improved his credit with the Count, and at the same time increased the despair of Isotta.

She moved wan and listless in those days, and Vendramin's attitude towards her was not calculated to lighten her burden. Whilst outwardly the perfect courtier, yet his courtship held now an indefinable undercurrent of irony, which, whilst so slight and elusive that it was impossible to seize upon it, was nevertheless perceptible to her keen senses.

Sometimes, when Marc-Antoine was with them, she would detect on Vendramin's lip a faint curl that was not merely the secret mockery of one in whom he perceived a defeated rival; and in his glance at moments she would surprise a malevolence that made her almost afraid. Of the meeting between the two men she knew nothing, and of the open enmity between them they had tacitly agreed to allow nothing to transpire here. The fact that they had no love for each other was beyond dissembling: but at least they used towards each other a cold and distant civility.