with an undisguised zest.  The Genoese—­themselves a self-contained people, and hypocritical, if not virtuous—­made less than a nine days’ wonder of him, he was so engagingly shameless, so frankly glad to have exchanged Corsica for the fleshpots.  There was talk that in a few days he would make formal and public resignation of his crown in the great hall of the Bank of Saint George.  Meanwhile, he flaunted it in the streets, the shops, the theatres.  His very publicity baulked us.  We tracked him daily—­his sister and I, in our peasant dress; but found never a chance to surprise him alone.  His eyes, which rested nowhere, never detected us.

We hunted him together, not consulting Marc’antonio and Stephanu, but rather agreeing to keep them out of the way.  Indeed I divined that the Princess’s anxiety to hold him in sight was due in some degree to her fear of these two and what they might intend.  For my part, I watched them of an evening, at Messer’ Fazio’s board, expecting some sign of jealousy.  But it appeared that they had resigned her to me, and were content to be excluded from our counsels.

Another thing puzzled me.  Public as the Prince made himself, he was never accompanied by his evil spirit (as I held him) the priest Domenico.  Yet—­ame damnee, or master devil, whichever he might be—­I felt sure that the key of our success lay in unearthing him.  So, while the Princess tracked her brother, I begged off at whiles to haunt the purlieus of the Palazzo Verde—­for three days without success.  But on the fourth I made a small discovery.

The rear of the Palazzo Verde, I have said, was surrounded by narrow alleys, of which that to the south was but a lane, scarcely five feet in width, dividing its garden from the back wall of another palace (as I remember, one of the Durazzi).  Halfway up this lane a narrow door broke the wall of the Palazzo Verde’s garden.  I had tried this door, and found it locked.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, as I turned into this lane, a middle-aged man met and passed me at the entrance, walking in a hurry.  I had no proof that he came from the garden-door of the Palazzo Verde, but I thought it worthwhile to turn and follow him; which I did, keeping at a distance, until he entered a goldsmith’s shop in the Strada Nuova, where presently, through the pane, I saw him talking with a customer across the counter.  I retraced my steps to the lane.  The door (needless to say) was closed; but behind it, not far within the garden, I heard a gentle persistent tapping, as of a hammer, and wondered what it might mean.

It spoke eloquently for the Prince Camillo’s zest after pleasure that he pursued it abroad in spite of the weather, which was abominable.  A searching mistral blew through the streets for four days, parching the blood, and on the night of the fourth rose to something like a hurricane.  Our players fought their way against it to the theatre, only to find it empty; and returned in the lowest of spirits.  The pretty Bianca was especially disconsolate.