When I was a very young man indeed I fell in love with Constance Pleyel. I am not the first man whose life has been set awry by his love for an unworthy woman, nor shall I be the last. I would very willingly keep silent about that episode in my life, but the story has to be told. It shall be told with due reticence; for if I cannot respect poor Constance any more, I can at least respect the feelings which made her sacred in my eyes for a year and more in the days of my boyhood. Months had gone by, and the spring of the year was near at hand. The count had come back to a condition of health and of mental strength which was no less than astonishing. I have never ceased to think it wonderful that a man who had been so long buried from the world, from all its interests, and from all knowledge of its affairs, should have been able so readily to take up the lost threads of life. The most remarkable thing about him, even if on the whole it were the least surprising, was the survival of the patriotic impulse in his mind. It seemed as if nothing could quench that, and as if all his suffering had served only to lend new fuel to that sacred flame. By this time he was deep in all our councils, the most active, and at once the wariest and most ardent of our leaders. I was pledged to the cause of Italy heart and soul, and was, I think, as thoroughly and % passionately devoted to her service as if the call of blood had sounded in me. I identified myself with the hopes of Miss Rossano and her father, and I was in all things their loyal servant and coadjutor. I suppose I have made it clear by this time that I had never any very great esteem or affection for Bru-now. He was in the thick of affairs, and knew as much of our intentions and of our actual movements as any man among us. It is no credit to me that I was willing to suspect him, and that I distrusted him from the beginning. I never thought him likely to be guilty of deliberate treason, but I always feared 'his rash and boastful tongue, and I confess that I did something here and there to inspire my comrades with the sense of my own mistrust. I have not the slightest doubt that he knew of this. I certainly never took any pains to disguise it from him, and I dare say that in what followed he partly justified his own action in his own mind by my dislike of him and his own dislike of me.