Murat laughed. "I will return the compliment," he said, writing rapidly on a card. "You have too much discrimination and obey orders too well to be a brigand. I wonder now if you have heard of a secret organisation called the Carbonari? I thought so" (replying by an almost imperceptible gesture to a signal made by the bandit); "you see you have made a mistake, for I also am a member of the order. All in time, my good fellow, and you shall use your rifle against the Austrians. Take this to the recruiting office of the Neapolitan army at Castel di Rocca. Never fear, it is no trap. This young man will read it for you." And the secretary read: "Give this brave fellow a place in the Corps of Calabrian Sharpshooters, and assure Captain Castiglione that he can be relied upon for expert guerilla service. Giacomo Re." The man went away trembling with emotion but Murat called to him: "Come back, you have forgotten your gun," and stood carelessly regarding the view with his back turned while the would-be assassin regained possession of his weapon. The Princess clapped her hands. "I understand now," she said, "why you bore a charmed life when you came dashing out of the smoke of the battle-field, sweeping within a few feet of the muzzles of the enemy's guns. It needed not the command of the Czar that you were not to be fired upon,--the gunners could no more have done so than this poor outlaw. I comprehend also how you have managed to augment the roll of your army, which on your accession included but fifty thousand names, to its present list of seventy-five thousand, and at the same time have so marvellously reduced the number of brigands in your kingdom." "Partly in this way," he acknowledged, lightly, "but the Austrian officers would be surprised to know how many of my best disciplined soldiers have had the advantage of their drilling." "Deserters?" the Princess asked. "And whole companies in Northern Italy waiting for the first symptoms of a war with Italy to desert en masse." When the party reached Mondragone the custodian, surprised at their coming (for the villa had been long unoccupied), unbarred the shutters and let the light into the dusty salons. "It is roomy enough for a barracks," Murat remarked as he wandered through suite after suite of the great tenantless rooms. "I forbid you so to use it," the Princess jested, "though you may occupy Mondragone yourself when you lay siege to Rome." "It would not be a bad headquarters," he said as they came out upon the terrace. "Imagine a semaphore in the place of those monstrous and absurd columns--what are they, by the way? One could waft signals from Rome to Calabria and from the Adriatic to the Tirrenian." That was an exaggeration, of course, but Mondragone would have been a good station in such a signal service.