here, the traitor there; and in one or two cases he did so with a
mildness that made those fret at their beards vaguely who understood his
character. Barto Rizzo was, it was said, born in a village near Forli,
in the dominions of the Pope; according to the rumour, he was the child
of a veiled woman and a cowled paternity. If not an offender against
Government, he was at least a wanderer early in life. None could accuse
him of personal ambition. He boasted that he had served as a common
soldier with the Italian contingent furnished by Eugene to the Moscow
campaign; he showed scars of old wounds: brown spots, and blue spots, and
twisted twine of white skin, dotting the wrist, the neck, the calf, the
ankle, and looking up from them, he slapped them proudly. Nor had he
personal animosities of any kind. One sharp scar, which he called his
shoulder knot, he owed to the knife of a friend, by name Sarpo, who had
things ready to betray him, and struck him, in anticipation of that
tremendous moment of surprise and wrath when the awakened victim
frequently is nerved with devil's strength; but, striking, like a novice,
on the bone, the stilet stuck there; and Barto coolly got him to point
the outlet of escape, and walked off, carrying the blade where the
terrified assassin had planted it. This Sarpo had become a tradesman in
Milan--a bookseller and small printer; and he was unmolested. Barto said
of him, that he was as bad as a few odd persons thought himself to be,
and had in him the making of a great traitor; but, that as Sarpo hated
him and had sought to be rid of him for private reasons only, it was a
pity to waste on such a fellow steel that should serve the Cause. "While
I live," said Barto, "my enemies have a tolerably active conscience."

The absence of personal animosity in him was not due to magnanimity. He
doubted the patriotism of all booksellers. He had been twice betrayed by
women. He never attempted to be revenged on them; but he doubted the
patriotism of all women. "Use them; keep eye on them," he said. In