"My dear friend Lind," said Calabressa, "you must not look so grave. Nothing that is going to happen is worth one's troubling one's self about. It is the present moment that is of consequence; and at the present moment I have a joke for you. You know Armfeldt, who is now at Berne: they had tried him only four times in Berlin; and there was only a little matter of nine years' sentence against him. Listen." He took up the _Osservatore_, and read out a paragraph, stating that Dr. Julius Armfeldt had again been tried _in contumaciam_, and sentenced to a further term of two years' imprisonment, for seditious writing. Further, the publisher of his latest pamphlet, a citizen of Berne, had likewise been sentenced in his absence to twelve months' imprisonment. "Do they think Armfeldt will live to be a centenarian, that they keep heaping up those sentences against him? Or is it as another inducement for him to go back to his native country and give himself up? It is a great joke, this childish proceeding; but a Government should not declare itself impotent. It is like the Austrians when they hanged you and the others in effigy. Now I remember, the little Natalushka was grieved that she was not born then; for she wished to see the spectacle, and to have killed the people who insulted her father." "I am afraid it is no joke at all," Lind said, gloomily. "Those Swiss people are craven. What can you expect from a nation of hotel-waiters? They cringe before every bully in Europe; you will find that, if Bismarck insists, the Federal Council will expel Armfeldt from Switzerland directly. No; the only safe refuge nowadays for the reformers, the Protestants the pioneers of Europe, is England; and the English do not know it; they do not think of it. They are so accustomed to freedom that they believe that is the only possible condition, and that other nations must necessarily enjoy it. When you talk to them of tyranny, of political persecution, they laugh. They cannot understand such a thing existing. They fancy it ceased when Bomba's dungeons were opened." "For my part," said Calabressa, lighting a cigarette, and calling for a small glass of cognac, "I am content with Naples." "And the protection of pickpockets?" "My friend," said the other, coolly, "if you refer to the most honorable the association of the Camorristi, I would advise you not to speak too loud." Calabressa rose, having settled his score with the waiter. "Allons!" said he. "What are you going to do to day?" "I don't know," said Lind, discontentedly. "May the devil fly away with this town of Venice! I never come here but it is either freezing or suffocating." "You are in an evil humor to-day, friend Lind; you have caught the English spleen. Come, I have a little business to do over at Murano; the breeze will do you good. And I will tell you the story of my escape."