“I never suggested that we should all rush into work for which we are unfitted. My idea was that we should try to find a really gifted satirist--there must be one to be got somewhere in Italy, surely--and offer to provide the necessary funds. Of course we should have to know something of the man and make sure that he would work on lines with which we could agree.” “But where are you going to find him? I can count up the satirists of any real talent on the fingers of one hand; and none of them are available. Giusti wouldn't accept; he is fully occupied as it is. There are one or two good men in Lombardy, but they write only in the Milanese dialect----” “And moreover,” said Grassini, “the Tuscan people can be influenced in better ways than this. I am sure that it would be felt as, to say the least, a want of political savoir faire if we were to treat this solemn question of civil and religious liberty as a subject for trifling. Florence is not a mere wilderness of factories and money-getting like London, nor a haunt of idle luxury like Paris. It is a city with a great history------” “So was Athens,” she interrupted, smiling; “but it was 'rather sluggish from its size and needed a gadfly to rouse it'----” Riccardo struck his hand upon the table. “Why, we never thought of the Gadfly! The very man!” “Who is that?” “The Gadfly--Felice Rivarez. Don't you remember him? One of Muratori's band that came down from the Apennines three years ago?” “Oh, you knew that set, didn't you? I remember your travelling with them when they went on to Paris.” “Yes; I went as far as Leghorn to see Rivarez off for Marseilles. He wouldn't stop in Tuscany; he said there was nothing left to do but laugh, once the insurrection had failed, and so he had better go to Paris. No doubt he agreed with Signor Grassini that Tuscany is the wrong place to laugh in. But I am nearly sure he would come back if we asked him, now that there is a chance of doing something in Italy.” “What name did you say?” “Rivarez. He's a Brazilian, I think. At any rate, I know he has lived out there. He is one of the wittiest men I ever came across. Heaven knows we had nothing to be merry over, that week in Leghorn; it was enough to break one's heart to look at poor Lambertini; but there was no keeping one's countenance when Rivarez was in the room; it was one perpetual fire of absurdities. He had a nasty sabre-cut across the face, too; I remember sewing it up. He's an odd creature; but I believe he and his nonsense kept some of those poor lads from breaking down altogether.” “Is that the man who writes political skits in the French papers under the name of 'Le Taon'?” “Yes; short paragraphs mostly, and comic feuilletons. The smugglers up in the Apennines called him 'the Gadfly' because of his tongue; and he took the nickname to sign his work with.”