A week following the day of meetings on the Motterone, Luigi the spy was in Milan, making his way across the Piazza de' Mercanti.

He entered a narrow court, one of those which were anciently built upon the Oriental principle of giving shade at the small cost of excluding common air.

It was dusky noon there through the hours of light, and thrice night when darkness fell.

The atmosphere, during the sun's short passage overhead, hung with a glittering heaviness, like the twinkling iron-dust in a subterranean smithy.

On the lower window of one of the houses there was a board, telling men that Barto Rizzo made and mended shoes, and requesting people who wished to see him to make much noise at the door, for he was hard of hearing.