394 The Cup of Honours. [Ocr. 
into life, as is expected from every man in office. My wife had her 
éxpénses too, and I became embarrassed.” 
** But the public funds were in your hands ; you might have relieved 
your difficulties, and replaced the money at your leisure.” 
«¢ Dreadful expedient! I need conceal nothing from you—you have 
some’ strange power over my confidence. I have been’in thé habit of 
employing that expedient ; and till now all has been safe : but ‘this very 
day I have received an order to pay up my balances to the minister, 
who is fitting out an expedition against the Algerines! I am’ not’at 
this hour master of a zechin. Matteo Flores is a villain ; but he is rigid 
to inferior villains—and I am undone.” 
« Matteo Flores! My old enemy, and yours too, my dear friend: 
Oh for an ounce of opium in his soup to-night: it would be but justice 
to you, to me, to all mankind! I swear it by the majesty of evil,” 
exclaimed the old man, springing up from his seat with the vigour of 
manhood; “ have you thought of nothing to save yourself? I know 
Matteo well; he is corrupt to the very bottom of his soul—but he ‘is 
vindictive, unprincipled, merciless. Ah, my young friend, how soon, 
if he were in your situation, he would extinguish all his fears: the tiger 
would have your blood before he laid his head upon the pillow to- 
night.” 
« And yet Flores, said the Italian, is not wise in being too hard upon me; _ 
I know some of his proceedings that might ruin him. We have had private 
transactions—for he has been constantly in want of money ; and, if I am 
not altogether mistaken, he is at this moment engaged in a desperate 
design. I am even convinced, that nothing but the urgency of this 
enterprize could make him press me now for ‘the money, which he must 
know I cannot raise, if I were to search the world.” 
«Then why not inform the king of it at once? You thereby save 
yourself, and extinguish his credit at a blow. You may remember, 
Matteo Flores has had the life of one king to answer for already. Smite 
him, and get yourself the name of a patriot—it is the most thriving 
trade going ; and if you then want to have the handling of the public 
gold, you may have it to your heart’s content, and have all the honour 
and glory that the rabble can give besides.” 
«1 have thought of it. But all access to the king has been of late 
impossible. Flores has had him surrounded by his creatures. The 
result of discovery on my part, would be an order for my hanging 
within four and twenty hours. I am inevitably a ruined man. 
Malatesta had cast his eye upon a case of pistols, hidden, on his 
entrance, among a mass of papers. He took up one of them, and pointed 
it significantly to his forehead. The Italian faintly smiled. ‘“ I see that 
I must have no secrets with you,’ "said he. “ Those things are sometimes 
good friends : they. pass a man’s accounts when nothing else can—you 
and I agree at last.” He took up the fellow pistol and began to examine 
the priming. Malatesta sat gazing at him as his eye glanced into the 
barrel. «‘Qne touch of this trigger,” murmured the Italian, “ ‘and all i is 
over.” 
« Madman !” exclaimed his visitor, seizing it, “ shoot your enemy, 
your destroyer, the public enemy, the regicide, if you will, or if you 
have a sense of common duty about you; but as to shooting yourse 
he sank back in his chair, with a laugh—“ would you make yourself thie ® 
sneer of all Naples, only to oblige him? Now, listen to me with all 
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