It was nearly five o'clock of a raw and windy afternoon in the month of March, 187-, when a young man, Bernardino de Rossi by name, came hastily out of an inner room of the Telegraph Office building at Leghorn, letting the heavy swinging door close sharply behind him with a disagreeable sound. The room which he entered was one reserved for the use of the Government clerks. Its floor was bare; its high walls, painted the same dull uniform yellow as the rest of the building, were lighted from above by a row of small square windows, crossed with rusty bars of iron--an arrangement which involuntarily suggested a prison ward; and there was little to contradict this fancy in the appearance of the…
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