"He told me, and my own heart grew cold as ice as I listened. My
poor Gennaro, in his wild and fiery days, when all the world
seemed against him and his mind was driven half mad by the
injustices of life, had joined a Neapolitan society, the Red
Circle, which was allied to the old Carbonari. The oaths and
secrets of this brotherhood were frightful, but once within its
rule no escape was possible. When we had fled to America Gennaro
thought that he had cast it all off forever. What was his horror
one evening to meet in the streets the very man who had initiated
him in Naples, the giant Gorgiano, a man who had earned the name
of 'Death' in the south of Italy, for he was red to the elbow in
murder! He had come to New York to avoid the Italian police, and
he had already planted a branch of this dreadful society in his
new home. All this Gennaro told me and showed me a summons which
he had received that very day, a Red Circle drawn upon the head
of it telling him that a lodge would be held upon a certain date,
and that his presence at it was required and ordered.
"That was bad enough, but worse was to come. I had noticed for
some time that when Gorgiano came to us, as he constantly did, in
the evening, he spoke much to me; and even when his words were to
my husband those terrible, glaring, wild-beast eyes of his were
always turned upon me.
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