Giacomo took the Count's arm, and sought to remove him from the crowd which surrounded him. The Count paid no attention to the old intendant. For a time, he strove almost to cast him off, and stood looking anxiously at a person he saw in the crowd, and whom like a swimmer he sought to approach. This person was his friend Taddeo Rovero. The young man sought in vain to approach the Count. The tide of living beings seconded their wishes, and at last they rushed into the arms of each other, forgetting, while thus enlocked, the world, their secret thoughts, the past, and the present, and mingling together the tears of friendship. "Air, day, sunlight, motion, life, life itself I have found. They woke up our existence; a dungeon is death--" Again he threw himself into the arms of Taddeo, with an expression of tenderness and happiness. "Adieu, my friends," said he to the crowd. "Count Monte-Leone will never forget these proofs of your sympathy, and you may rely on him, his arm, his heart, his fortune, as he does on you." Taking Taddeo by the arm, he hurried into a neighboring street, accompanied at a little distance by Giacomo, who, as he panted after them, cried out, "Too fast, too fast--what the devil can I do? My legs are worn out--remember I came from the villa to _la Vicaria_ on foot to bring your ring to the Grand Judge." "My ring!"--then looking anxiously at Giacomo, and in a low tone, he said: "Are you sure it is my ring?" "Yes, I swear to it by the blood of Christ and by your life." "My friends," said the Count, "we have strange secrets to talk of when we are in a safe place. And there the ear and lip must be close together, so that not even the walls of the room in which we are shall be struck by the sound of our accents. Wait for me at the Etruscan villa. In two hours I will rejoin you." "Why not go thither now?" asked Taddeo. "Two hours hence I will tell you." Without speaking a word, and without listening to Rovero's reply, Monte-Leone put on a cloak the old intendant had brought and passed into a labyrinth of passages, with the intricate windings of which his political associations had made him familiar. An hour after the Count so brusquely left Taddeo and the old intendant, he paused at the door of one of the most ancient churches in Naples, an old pile, built in 1284, and called _San Domenico Maggiore_. It is of vast size, built in the Gothic style, and has a magnificent picture of Titiano, the Flagellation of Caravaggio, and in the sacristy a glory by Solimene. But not to contemplate them had Monte-Leone come to the church. A deeply-rooted sentiment forced him, for a few moments, to pause beneath the old portico before he entered the sanctuary.