A shabby shrewd-looking fellow in a dirty coat and snuff-stained stock had sauntered up to the table and stood listening with an amused smile.

“Ah,” said the scribe, glancing up, “here’s a thoroughgoing reformer, who’ll be asking us all to throw up our hats for the new charter.”

The new-comer laughed contemptuously.  “I?” he said.  “God forbid!  The new charter’s none of my making.  It’s only another dodge for getting round the populace—­for appearing to give them what they would rise up and take if it were denied them any longer.”

“Why, I thought you were hot for these reforms?” exclaimed the fat man with surprise.

The other shrugged.  “You might as well say I was in favour of having the sun rise tomorrow.  It would probably rise at the same hour if I voted against it.  Reform is bound to come, whether your Dukes and Princes are for it or against it; and those that grant constitutions instead of refusing them are like men who tie a string to their hats before going out in a gale.  The string may hold for a while—­but if it blows hard enough the hats will all come off in the end.”

“Ay, ay; and meanwhile we furnish the string from our own pockets,” said the scribe with a chuckle.

The shabby man grinned.  “It won’t be the last thing to come out of your pockets,” said he, turning to push his way toward another table.

The others rose and called for their reckoning; and the listener on the cask slipped out of his corner, elbowed a passage to the door and stepped forth into the square.

It was after midnight, a thin drizzle was falling, and the crowd had scattered.  The rain was beginning to extinguish the paper lanterns and the torches, and the canvas sides of the tents flapped dismally, like wet sheets on a clothes-line.  The man drew his cloak closer, and avoiding the stragglers who crossed his path, turned into the first street that led to the palace.  He walked fast over the slippery cobble-stones, buffeted by a rising wind and threading his way between dark walls and sleeping house-fronts till he reached the lane below the ducal gardens.  He unlocked the door by which he had come forth, entered the gardens, and paused a moment on the terrace above the lane.

Behind him rose the palace, a dark irregular bulk, with a lighted window showing here and there.  Before him lay the city, an indistinguishable huddle of roofs and towers under the rainy night.  He stood awhile gazing out over it; then he turned and walked toward the palace.  The garden alleys were deserted, the pleached walks dark as subterranean passages, with the wet gleam of statues starting spectrally out of the blackness.  The man walked rapidly, leaving the Borromini wing on his left, and skirting the outstanding mass of the older buildings.  Behind the marble buttresses of the chapel, he crossed the dense obscurity of a court between high walls, found a door under an archway, turned a key in the lock, and gained a spiral stairway as dark as the court.  He groped his way up the stairs and paused a moment on the landing to listen.  Then he opened another door, lifted a heavy hanging of tapestry, and stepped into the Duke’s closet.  It stood empty, with a lamp burning low on the desk.