I can
arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity
between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural
inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us
to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and
the Empire."
All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying
to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern. At
this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the
immobile horseman whom we had twice passed in the rain by the roadside the
morning I had started from my villa for Rome. His hooked nose was
unmistakable.
Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had
said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was
exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his
ideas and plans.
I felt my face redden.
"You have said enough!" I cut him short. "I perfectly understand. You
think yourself the destined savior of Rome and the deviser of priceless
plans for Rome's future. You are not so much a conspirator as a lunatic.
Your schemes are half idiocy, half moonshine. I have pledged you my word
to be secret as to what you have told me.
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