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But we pass from meek Madonnas and seraphic saints, from gleaming Claudes and Guidos soft as Eve, from Rubens's satyrs and Albano's boys, and even from those gay and natural medleys, paintings that cheer the heart, where fruit and flower, with their brilliant bloom, call to a feast the butterfly and bee; we pass from these to square-headed ancestors by Holbein, all black velvet and gold chains; cavaliers, by Vandyke, all lace and spurs, with pointed beards, that did more execution even than their pointed swords; patriots and generals, by Kneller, in Blenheim wigs and Steen-kirk cravats, all robes and armour; scarlet judges that supported ship-money, and purple bishops, who had not been sent to the Tower.
Liana's fingers ceased to play; she lay peaceful and smiling, but dead. II. Linda De Romeiro Albano's state for a long time was one of fever. He lay dressed in bed, unable to walk, in a burning heat, talking wildly, and as each hour struck on the clock, springing up to kneel down and utter the prayer, "Liana, appear, and give me peace!" to the high, shut-up heavens.
I could see that Kennedy had made up his mind as to his course of action. "How sordid crime really is," he remarked as we walked on down the street. "Look at that place of Albano's. I defy even the police news reporter on the Star to find any glamour in that."
What if the real Black Hand is any gang of criminals who choose to use that convenient name to extort money? Is it the less real? My daughter is gone!" "Exactly," agreed Kennedy. "It is not a theory that confronts you. It is a hard, cold fact. I understand that perfectly. What is the address of this Albano's?" Luigi mentioned a number on Mulberry Street, and Kennedy made a note of it.
And as for her brother, the madcap Roquairol, who in his thirteenth year had shot at himself with suicidal intent because the little Countess Linda de Romeiro, Albano's father's ward, had turned her back upon him, could our hero's admiration be withheld from a youth of his own age who already possessed all the accomplishments and had tasted all the passions?
Gaspard, Count Cesara, Knight of the Fleece, had met his son, for the first time in Albano's memory, at Lake Maggiore, and Albano had come away from the meeting with a feeling of chill that poisoned his heart, eager as it was to love and be loved, and a vague, discomposing sense that in his birth there was a mystery.
Honorable sir: Your daughter is in safe hands. But, by the saints, if you give this letter to the police as you did the other, not only she but your family also, someone near to you, will suffer. We will not fail as we did Wednesday. If you want your daughter back, go yourself, alone and without telling a soul, to Enrico Albano's Saturday night at the twelfth hour.
Vincenzo, you pretend to be working around your window, but not in such a way as to attract attention, for they have men watching the street very carefully. What is it, Luigi?" "Gennaro is coming. I just heard one of them say, 'Here he comes." Even from the booth I could hear the dictograph repeating the conversation in the dingy little back room of Albano's, down the street.
It was the faithful, Luigi. In front of Albano's an exciting fight was going on. Shots were being fired wildly in the darkness, and heads were popping out of tenement windows on all sides.
Now, in the fullness of time, was the letter placed before Albano's eyes and the token of the fullness of time was the death, without issue, of Prince Luigi, and the seeming inheritance of his dominions by the House of Haarkaar. Thus the letter began: "My son, Hear thine own history from the mouth of thy mother; from no other will it come to thee more acceptably.