"And now I must beg you to pardon me for all the trouble and disturbance I have occasioned you, dear friend; I can never thank you enough. You, and you alone, have been true to me. For your own sake, I entreat you also to beware of false friends--especially avoid Kosinski.----Yours ever, "GIACOMO GIANNOLI." CHAPTER XI A CRISIS The flight of Giannoli, and all the worry and turmoil occasioned thereby, told on my health. I did not admit as much to myself, and I still kept on at the paper as usual through the very thick of it all. For one thing, this was necessary in order not to arouse the curiosity of many of the comrades, and moreover there is no doubt that whatever line of life we may adopt we gradually become the creatures of our habits, however much we may scoff at such a notion. Thus, though I had grown out of the first stage of youthful enthusiasm when I revelled in squalor and discomfort, and sincerely believed myself to be one of the hubs round which the future Revolution and the redemption of mankind circled, and though experience had opened my eyes to much that was unlovely, and not a little which was despicable, in my associates, still I stuck at my post and continued my work on the paper. On arriving at the office towards nine every morning, my first task was to get Short out of pawn in the neighbouring coffee-shop, where he retired--regardless of the fact that his pockets were but capacious vacuums--in order to regale himself on shop eggs and fly-blown pastry, and where his person was detained as a pledge till my purse redeemed him. I would then work away, "dissing" or "comping," "locking up forms," or writing a "leader," till some of the Italians, keenly alive to their ownership of stomachs, would call me off to partake of a Milanese _minestra_, or to pronounce on the excellencies of a mess of _polenta_. Then would follow an hour devoted to digestion and talk, when Short, if in a bad temper, would smoke abominable shag, and raise the bowl of his clay pipe into quite perilous proximity with his eyebrows, and if genially inclined, would entertain some one member of the company to dark tales and fearsome hints as to the depraved habits and questionable sincerity of his or her dearest friend.