Alpha Book

"And the blood of Cola di Rienzo burns under the shame of an
obligation!" cried Contini, with a heat hardly warranted by the
circumstances. "It is humiliating, it is base, to submit to be the tool
of a Del Ferice--we all know who and what Del Ferice was, and how he
came by his title of count, and how he got his fortune--a spy, an
intriguer! In a good cause? Perhaps. I was not born then, nor you
either, Signor Principe, and we do not know what the world was like,
when it was quite another world. That is not a reason for serving a
spy!"
"Calm yourself, my friend. We are not in Del Ferice's service."
"Better to die than that! Better to kill him at once and go to the
galleys for a few years! Better to play the fiddle, or pick rags, or beg
in the streets than that, Signor Principe. One must respect oneself. You
see it yourself. One must be a man, and feel as a man. One must feel
those things here, Signor Principe, here in the heart!"
Contini struck his breast with his clenched fist and bit the end of his
cigar quite through in his anger.


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