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Vittoria — Complete

by George Meredith · English · Gutenberg #4443 · 1,114,379 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Vittoria — Complete

Author: George Meredith


        
Release date: November 3, 2004 [eBook #4443]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4443

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VITTORIA — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





VITTORIA


By George Meredith




CONTENTS:

  BOOK 1.
  I.        UP MONTE MOTTERONE
  II.       ON THE HEIGHTS
  III.      SIGNORINA VITTORIA
  IV.       AMMIANI'S INTERCESSION
  V.        THE SPY
  VI.       THE WARNING
  VII.      BARTO RIZZO
  VIII.     THE LETTER

  BOOK 2.
  IX.       IN VERONA
  X.        THE POPE'S MOUTH
  XI.       LAURA PIAVENI
  XII.      THE BRONZE BUTTERFLY
  XIII.     THE PLOT OF THE SIGNOR ANTONIO

  BOOK 3.
  XIV.      AT THE MAESTRO'S DOOR
  XV.       AMMIANI THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT
  XVI.      COUNTESS AMMIANI
  XVII.     IN THE PIAZZA D'ARMI
  XVIII.    THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH
  XIX.      THE PRIMA DONNA

  BOOK 4.
  XX.       THE OPERA OF CAMILLA
  XXI.      THE THIRD ACT
  XXII.     WILFRID COMES FORWARD
  XXIII.    FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT
  XXIV.     ADVENTURES OF VITTORIA AND ANGELO
  XXV.      ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

  BOOK 5.
  XXVI.     THE DUEL IN THE PASS
  XXVII.    A NEW ORDEAL
  XXVIII.   THE ESCAPE OF ANGELO

  BOOK 6.
  XXIX.     EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE TOBACCO RIOTS
            --RINALDO GUIDASCARPI
  XXX.      EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN
  XXXI.     EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--VITTORIA DISOBEYS HER LOVER
  XXXII.    EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE TREACHERY OF
            PERICLES-THE WRITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO GUIDASCARPI

  BOOK 7.
  XXXIII.   EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN--
            THE STORY OF THE GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE VOLUNTEERS
  XXXIV.    EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE DEEDS OF BARTO RIZZO--
            THE MEETING AT ROVEREDO
  XXXV.     CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN--VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY
  XXXVI.    A FRESH ENTANGLEMENT
  XXXVII.   ON LAGO MAGGIORE
  XXXVIII.  VIOLETTA D'ISORELLA
  XXXIX.    ANNA OF LENKENSTEIN

  BOOK 8.
  XL.       THROUGH THE WINTER
  XLI.      THE INTERVIEW
  XLII.     THE SHADOW OF CONSPIRACY
  XLIII.    THE LAST MEETING IN MILAN
  XLIV.     THE WIFE AND THE HUSBAND
  XLV.      SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END
  XLVI.     THE LAST
            EPILOGUE




CHAPTER I

From Monte Motterone you survey the Lombard plain. It is a towering dome
of green among a hundred pinnacles of grey and rust-red crags. At
dawn the summit of the mountain has an eagle eye for the far Venetian
boundary and the barrier of the Apennines; but with sunrise come the
mists. The vast brown level is seen narrowing in; the Ticino and the
Sesia waters, nearest, quiver on the air like sleepy lakes; the plain is
engulphed up to the high ridges of the distant Southern mountain range,
which lie stretched to a faint cloud-like line, in shape like a solitary
monster of old seas crossing the Deluge. Long arms of vapour stretch
across the urn-like valleys, and gradually thickening and swelling
upward, enwrap the scored bodies of the ashen-faced peaks and the
pastures of the green mountain, till the heights become islands over
a forgotten earth. Bells of herds down the hidden run of the sweet
grasses, and a continuous leaping of its rivulets, give the Motterone
a voice of youth and homeliness amid that stern company of Titan-heads,
for whom the hawk and the vulture cry. The storm has beaten at them
until they have got the aspect of the storm. They take colour from
sunlight, and are joyless in colour as in shade. When the lower world
is under pushing steam, they wear the look of the revolted sons of Time,
fast chained before scornful heaven in an iron peace. Day at last brings
vigorous fire; arrows of light pierce the mist-wreaths, the dancing
draperies, the floors of vapour; and the mountain of piled pasturages is
seen with its foot on the shore of Lago Maggiore. Down an extreme gulf
the full sunlight, as if darting on a jewel in the deeps, seizes the
blue-green lake with its isles. The villages along the darkly-wooded
borders of the lake show white as clustered swans; here and there a
tented boat is visible, shooting from terraces of vines, or hanging on
its shadow. Monte Boscero is unveiled; the semicircle of the Piedmontese
and the Swiss peaks, covering Lake Orta, behind, on along the Ticinese
and the Grisons, leftward toward and beyond the Lugano hills, stand bare
in black and grey and rust-red and purple. You behold a burnished realm
of mountain and plain beneath the royal sun of Italy. In the foreground
it shines hard as the lines of an irradiated Cellini shield. Farther
away, over middle ranges that are soft and clear, it melts, confusing
the waters with hot rays, and the forests with darkness, to where,
wavering in and out of view like flying wings, and shadowed like wings
of archangels with rose and with orange and with violet, silverwhite
Alps are seen. You might take them for mystical streaming torches on the
border-ground between vision and fancy. They lean as in a great flight
forward upon Lombardy.

The curtain of an early autumnal morning was everywhere lifted around
the Motterone, save for one milky strip of cloud that lay lizard-like
across the throat of Monte Boscero facing it, when a party of five
footfarers, who had met from different points of ascent some way below,
and were climbing the mountain together, stood upon the cropped herbage
of the second plateau, and stopped to eye the landscape; possibly also
to get their breath. They were Italians. Two were fair-haired muscular
men, bronzed by the sun and roughly bearded, bearing the stamp of breed
of one or other of the hill-cities under the Alps. A third looked a
sturdy soldier, squareset and hard of feature, for whom beauties of
scenery had few awakening charms. The remaining couple were an old
man and a youth, upon whose shoulder the veteran leaned, and with a
whimsical turn of head and eye, indicative of some playful cast of
mind, poured out his remarks upon the objects in sight, and chuckled
to himself, like one who has learnt the necessity to appreciate his own
humour if he is disposed to indulge it. He was carelessly wrapped about
in long loose woollen stuff, but the youth was dressed like a Milanese
cavalier of the first quality, and was evidently one who would have been
at home in the fashionable Corso. His face was of the sweetest virile
Italian beauty. The head was long, like a hawk's, not too lean, and not
sharply ridged from a rapacious beak, but enough to show characteristics
of eagerness and promptitude. His eyes were darkest blue, the eyebrows
and long disjoining eyelashes being very dark over them, which made
their colour precious. The nose was straight and forward from the brows;
a fluent black moustache ran with the curve of the upper lip, and lost
its line upon a smooth olive cheek. The upper lip was firmly supported
by the under, and the chin stood freely out from a fine neck and throat.

After a space an Austrian war-steamer was discerned puffing out of the
harbour of Laveno.

“That will do,” said the old man. “Carlo, thou son of Paolo, we will
stump upward once more. Tell me, hulloa, sir! are the best peaches
doomed to entertain vile, domiciliary, parasitical insects? I ask you,
does nature exhibit motherly regard, or none, for the regions of the
picturesque? None, I say. It is an arbitrary distinction of our day. To
complain of the intrusion of that black-yellow flag and foul smoke-line
on the lake underneath us is preposterous, since, as you behold, the
heavens make no protestation. Let us up. There is comfort in exercise,
even for an ancient creature such as I am. This mountain is my brother,
and flatters me not--I am old.”

“Take my arm, dear Agostino,” said the youth.

“Never, my lad, until I need it. On, ahead of me, goat! chamois! and
teach me how the thing used to be done in my time. Old legs must be
the pupils of young ones mark that piece of humility, and listen with
respectfulness to an old head by-and-by.”

It was the autumn antecedent to that memorable Spring of the great
Italian uprising, when, though for a tragic issue, the people of Italy
first felt and acted as a nation, and Charles Albert, called the Sword
of Italy, aspired, without comprehension of the passion of patriotism
by which it was animated, to lead it quietly into the fold of his
Piedmontese kingship.

There is not an easier or a pleasanter height to climb than the
Motterone, if, in Italian heat, you can endure the disappointment of
seeing the summit, as you ascend, constantly flit away to a farther
station. It seems to throw its head back, like a laughing senior when
children struggle up for kissings. The party of five had come through
the vines from Stresa and from Baveno. The mountain was strange to them,
and they had already reckoned twice on having the topmost eminence
in view, when reaching it they found themselves on a fresh plateau,
traversed by wild water-courses, and browsed by Alpine herds; and again
the green dome was distant. They came to the highest chalet, where a
hearty wiry young fellow, busily employed in making cheese, invited
them to the enjoyment of shade and fresh milk. “For the sake of these
adolescents, who lose much and require much, let it be so,” said
Agostino gravely, and not without some belief that he consented to rest
on behalf of his companions. They allowed the young mountaineer to close
the door, and sat about his fire like sagacious men. When cooled and
refreshed, Agostino gave the signal for departure, and returned thanks
for hospitality. Money was not offered and not expected. As they
were going forth the mountaineer accompanied them to the step on the
threshold, and with a mysterious eagerness in his eyes, addressed
Agostino.

“Signore, is it true?--the king marches?”

“Who is the king, my friend?” returned Agostino. “If he marches out of
his dominions, the king confers a blessing on his people perchance.”

“Our king, signore!” The mountaineer waved his finger as from Novara
toward Milan.

Agostino seemed to awaken swiftly from his disguise of an absolute
gravity. A red light stood in his eyeballs, as if upon a fiery answer.
The intemperate fit subsided. Smoothing dawn his mottled grey beard with
quieting hands, he took refuge in his habitual sententious irony.

“My friend, I am not a hare in front of the king, nor am I a ram in the
rear of him: I fly him not, neither do I propel him. So, therefore, I
cannot predict the movements of the king. Will the wind blow from the
north to-morrow, think you?”

The mountaineer sent a quick gaze up the air, as to descry signs.

“Who knows?” Agostino continued, though not playing into the smiles of
his companions; “the wind will blow straight thither where there is
a vacuum; and all that we can state of the king is, that there is
a positive vacuum here. It would be difficult to predict the king's
movements save by such weighty indications.”

He laid two fingers hard against the rib which shields the heart. It had
become apparently necessary for the speaker to relieve a mind surcharged
with bile at the mention of the king; for, having done, he rebuked
with an amazed frown the indiscretion of Carlo, who had shouted, “The
Carbonaro king!”

“Carlo, my son, I will lean on your arm. On your mouth were better,”
 Agostino added, under his voice, as they moved on.

“Oh, but,” Carlo remonstrated, “let us trust somebody. Milan has made me
sick of late. I like the look of that fellow.”

“You allow yourself, my Carlo, an immense indulgence in permitting
yourself to like the look of anything. Now, listen--Viva Carlo Alberto!”

The old man rang out the loyal salutation spiritedly, and awoke a prompt
response from the mountaineer, who sounded his voice wide in the keen
upper air.

“There's the heart of that fellow!” said Agostino. “He has but one
idea--his king! If you confound it, he takes you for an enemy. These
free mountain breezes intoxicate you. You would embrace the king himself
if you met him here.”

“I swear I would never be guilty of the bad joke of crying a 'Viva'
to him anywhere upon earth,” Carlo replied. “I offend you,” he said
quickly.

The old man was smiling.

“Agostino Balderini is too notoriously a bad joker to be offended by the
comments of the perfectly sensible, boy of mine! My limbs were stiff,
and the first three steps from a place of rest reminded me acutely of
the king's five years of hospitality. He has saved me from all fatigue
so long, that the necessity to exercise these old joints of mine touched
me with a grateful sense of his royal bounty. I had from him a chair,
a bed, and a table: shelter from sun and from all silly chatter. Now I
want a chair or a bed. I should like to sit at a table; the sun burns
me; my ears are afflicted. I cry 'Viva!' to him that I may be in harmony
with the coming chorus of Italy, which I prophetically hear. That young
fellow, in whom you confide so much, speaks for his country. We poor
units must not be discordant. No! Individual opinion, my Carlo, is
discord when there is a general delirium. The tide arriving, let us make
the best of the tide. My voice is wisdom. We shall have to follow this
king!”

“Shall we!” uttered one behind them gruffly. “When I see this king
swallow one ounce of Austrian lead, I shall not be sorry to follow him!”

“Right, my dear Ugo,” said Agostino, turning round to him; “and I will
then compose his hymn of praise. He has swallowed enough of Austrian
bread. He took an Austrian wife to his bed. Who knows? he may some day
declare a preference for Austrian lead. But we shall have to follow him,
or stay at home drivelling.”

Agostino raised his eyes, that were glazed with the great heat of his
frame.

“Oh, that, like our Dante, I had lived in the days when souls were
damned! Then would I uplift another shout, believe me! As things go
now, we must allow the traitor to hope for his own future, and we simply
shrug. We cannot plant him neck-deep for everlasting in a burning marl,
and hear him howling. We have no weapons in these times--none! Our
curses come back to roost. This is one of the serious facts of the
century, and controls violent language. What! are you all gathered about
me? Oracles must be moving, too. There's no rest even for them, when
they have got a mountain to scale.”

A cry, “He is there!” and “Do you see him?” burst from the throats of
men surrounding Agostino.

Looking up to the mountain's top, they had perceived the figure of
one who stood with folded arms, sufficiently near for the person of an
expected friend to be descried. They waved their hats, and Carlo
shot ahead. The others trod after him more deliberately, but in glad
excitement, speculating on the time which this sixth member of the
party, who were engaged to assemble at a certain hour of the morning
upon yonder height, had taken to reach the spot from Omegna, or Orta,
or Pella, and rejoicing that his health should be so stout in despite of
his wasting labours under city smoke.

“Yes, health!” said Agostino. “Is it health, do you think? It's the
heart of the man! and a heart with a mill-stone about it--a heart to
breed a country from! There stands the man who has faith in Italy,
though she has been lying like a corpse for centuries. God bless him! He
has no other comfort. Viva l'Italia!”

The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the eminence
overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the air
sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he, until
Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene stedfastly,
with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured long exile,
and finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange,
beloved, visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the
far-spreading hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the
gleam of the distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an
airy host, mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of
a flight toward the underlying purple land.




CHAPTER II

He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood
defined against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the
student's aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the
straining of the buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one who
waited and listened, which distinguished his figure, detracted from the
promise of other than contemplative energy, until his eyes were fairly
seen and felt. That is, until the observer became aware that those soft
and large dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In them lay no
abstracted student's languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but
a quiet grappling force engaged the penetrating look. Gazing upon them,
you were drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring wheels of a
capacious and a vigorous mind, that was both reasoning and prompt, keen
of intellect, acting throughout all its machinery, and having all under
full command: an orbed mind, supplying its own philosophy, and arriving
at the sword-stroke by logical steps,--a mind much less supple than a
soldier's; anything but the mind of a Hamlet. The eyes were dark as the
forest's border is dark; not as night is dark. Under favourable lights
their colour was seen to be a deep rich brown, like the chestnut, or
more like the hazel-edged sunset brown which lies upon our western rivers
in the winter floods, when night begins to shadow them.

The side-view of his face was an expression of classic beauty rarely now
to be beheld, either in classic lands or elsewhere. It was severe; the
tender serenity of the full bow of the eyes relieved it. In profile they
showed little of their intellectual quality, but what some might have
thought a playful luminousness, and some a quick pulse of feeling. The
chin was firm; on it, and on the upper lip, there was a clipped growth
of black hair. The whole visage widened upward from the chin, though not
very markedly before it reached the broad-lying brows. The temples were
strongly indented by the swelling of the forehead above them: and
on both sides of the head there ran a pregnant ridge, such as will
sometimes lift men a deplorable half inch above the earth we tread.
If this man was a problem to others, he was none to himself; and when
others called him an idealist, he accepted the title, reading himself,
notwithstanding, as one who was less flighty than many philosophers and
professedly practical teachers of his generation. He saw far, and he
grasped ends beyond obstacles: he was nourished by sovereign principles;
he despised material present interests; and, as I have said, he was less
supple than a soldier. If the title of idealist belonged to him, we will
not immediately decide that it was opprobrious. The idealized conception
of stern truths played about his head certainly for those who knew and
who loved it. Such a man, perceiving a devout end to be reached, might
prove less scrupulous in his course, possibly, and less remorseful, than
revolutionary Generals. His smile was quite unclouded, and came softly
as a curve in water. It seemed to flow with, and to pass in and out of,
his thoughts, to be a part of his emotion and his meaning when it
shone transiently full. For as he had an orbed mind, so had he an orbed
nature. The passions were absolutely in harmony with the intelligence.
He had the English manner; a remarkable simplicity contrasting with
the demonstrative outcries and gesticulations of his friends when they
joined him on the height. Calling them each by name, he received their
caresses and took their hands; after which he touched the old man's
shoulder.

“Agostino, this has breathed you?”

“It has; it has, my dear and best one!” Agostino replied. “But here is a
good market-place for air. Down below we have to scramble for it in the
mire. The spies are stifling down below. I don't know my own shadow. I
begin to think that I am important. Footing up a mountain corrects the
notion somewhat. Yonder, I believe, I see the Grisons, where Freedom
sits. And there's the Monte della Disgrazia. Carlo Alberto should be on
the top of it, but he is invisible. I do not see that Unfortunate.”

“No,” said Carlo Ammiani, who chimed to his humour more readily than
the rest, and affected to inspect the Grisons' peak through a diminutive
opera-glass. “No, he is not there.”

“Perhaps, my son, he is like a squirrel, and is careful to run up
t'other side of the stem. For he is on that mountain; no doubt of it
can exist even in the Boeotian mind of one of his subjects; myself, for
example. It will be an effulgent fact when he gains the summit.”

The others meantime had thrown themselves on the grass at the feet of
their manifestly acknowledged leader, and looked up for Agostino to
explode the last of his train of conceits. He became aware that the
moment for serious talk had arrived, and bent his body, groaning loudly,
and uttering imprecations against him whom he accused of being the
promoter of its excruciating stiffness, until the ground relieved him of
its weight. Carlo continued standing, while his eyes examined restlessly
the slopes just surmounted by them, and occasionally the deep descent
over the green-glowing Orta Lake. It was still early morning. The heat
was tempered by a cool breeze that came with scents of thyme. They had
no sight of human creature anywhere, but companionship of Alps and birds
of upper air; and though not one of them seasoned the converse with
an exclamation of joy and of blessings upon a place of free speech and
safety, the thought was in their hunted bosoms, delicious as a woodland
rivulet that sings only to the leaves overshadowing it.

They were men who had sworn to set a nation free,--free from the
foreigner, to begin with.

(He who tells this tale is not a partisan; he would deal equally toward
all. Of strong devotion, of stout nobility, of unswerving faith and
self-sacrifice, he must approve; and when these qualities are displayed
in a contest of forces, the wisdom of means employed, or of ultimate
views entertained, may be questioned and condemned; but the men
themselves may not be.)

These men had sworn their oath, knowing the meaning of it, and the
nature of the Fury against whom men who stand voluntarily pledged to any
great resolve must thenceforward match themselves. Many of the original
brotherhood had fallen, on the battle-field, on the glacis, or in
the dungeon. All present, save the youthfuller Carlo, had suffered.
Imprisonment and exile marked the Chief. Ugo Corte, of Bergamo, had seen
his family swept away by the executioner and pecuniary penalties. Thick
scars of wounds covered the body and disfigured the face of Giulio
Bandinelli. Agostino had crawled but half-a-year previously out of his
Piedmontese cell, and Marco Sana, the Brescian, had in such a place
tasted of veritable torture. But if the calamity of a great oath was
upon them, they had now in their faithful prosecution of it the support
which it gives. They were unwearied; they had one object; the mortal
anguish they had gone through had left them no sense for regrets. Life
had become the field of an endless engagement to them; and as in battle
one sees beloved comrades struck down, and casts but a glance at their
prostrate forms, they heard the mention of a name, perchance, and with
a word or a sign told what was to be said of a passionate glorious heart
at rest, thanks to Austrian or vassal-Sardinian mercy.

So they lay there and discussed their plans.

“From what quarter do you apprehend the surprise?” Ugo Corte glanced
up from the maps and papers spread along the grass to question Carlo
ironically, while the latter appeared to be keeping rigid watch over the
safety of the position. Carlo puffed the smoke of a cigarette rapidly,
and Agostino replied for him:--“From the quarter where the best donkeys
are to be had.”

It was supposed that Agostino had resumed the habit usually laid aside
by him for the discussion of serious matters, and had condescended to
father a coarse joke; but his eyes showed no spark of their well-known
twinkling solicitation for laughter, and Carlo spoke in answer
gravely:--“From Baveno it will be.”

“From Baveno! They might as well think to surprise hawks from Baveno.
Keep watch, dear Ammiani; a good start in a race is a kick from the
Gods.”

With that, Corte turned to the point of his finger on the map. He
conceived it possible that Carlo Ammiani, a Milanese, had reason to
anticipate the approach of people by whom he, or they, might not wish to
be seen. Had he studied Carlo's face he would have been reassured. The
brows of the youth were open, and his eyes eager with expectation, that
showed the flying forward of the mind, and nothing of knotted distrust
or wary watchfulness. Now and then he would move to the other side of
the mountain, and look over upon Orta; or with the opera-glass clasped
in one hand beneath an arm, he stopped in his sentinel-march, frowning
reflectively at a word put to him, as if debating within upon all the
bearings of it; but the only answer that came was a sharp assent,
given after the manner of one who dealt conscientiously in definite
affirmatives; and again the glass was in requisition. Marco Sana was
a fighting soldier, who stated what he knew, listened, and took his
orders. Giulio Bandinelli was also little better than the lieutenant in
an enterprise. Corte, on the other hand, had the conspirator's head,--a
head like a walnut, bulging above the ears,--and the man was of a
sallying temper. He lay there putting bit by bit of his plot before
the Chief for his approval, with a careful construction, that upon the
expression of any doubt of its working smoothly in the streets of Milan,
caused him to shout a defensive, “But Carlo says yes!”

This uniform character of Ammiani's replies, and the smile of Agostino
on hearing them, had begun to strike the attention of the soldierly
Marco Sana. He ran his hand across his shorn head, and puffed his burnt
red mole-spotted cheeks, with a sidelong stare at the abstracted youth,
“Said yes!” he remarked. “He might say no, for a diversion. He has
yeses enough in his pay to earn a Cardinal's hat. 'Is Milan preparing to
rise?' 'Yes.'--'Is she ready for the work?' 'Yes.'--'Is the garrison
on its guard?' 'Yes.'--'Have you seen Barto Rizzo?' 'Yes.'--'Have the
people got the last batch of arms?' 'Yes.'--And 'Yes,' the secret is
well kept; 'Yes,' Barto Rizzo is steadily getting them together. We may
rely on him: Carlo is his intimate friend: Yes, Yes:--There's a regiment
of them at your service, and you may shuffle them as you will. This is
the help we get from Milan: a specimen of what we may expect!”

Sana had puffed himself hot, and now blew for coolness.

“You are,”--Agostino addressed him,--“philosophically totally wrong, my
Marco. Those affirmatives are fat worms for the catching of fish. They
are the real pretty fruit of the Hesperides. Personally, you or I may be
irritated by them: but I'm not sure they don't please us. Were Carlo
a woman, of course he should learn to say no;--as he will now if I
ask him, Is she in sight? I won't do it, you know; but as a man and a
diplomatist, it strikes me that he can't say yes too often.”

“Answer me, Count Ammiani, and do me the favour to attend to these
trifles for the space of two minutes,” said Corte. “Have you seen Barto
Rizzo? Is he acting for Medole?”

“As mole, as reindeer, and as bloody northern Raven!” ejaculated
Agostino: “perhaps to be jackal, by-and-by. But I do not care to abuse
our Barto Rizzo, who is a prodigy of nature, and has, luckily for
himself, embraced a good cause, for he is certain to be hanged if he is
not shot. He has the prophetic owl's face. I have always a fancy of his
hooting his own death-scrip. I wrong our Barto:--Medole would be the
jackal, if it lay between the two.”

Carlo Ammiani had corrected Corte's manner to him by a complacent
readiness to give him distinct replies. He then turned and set off at
full speed down the mountain.

“She is sighted at last,” Agostino murmured, and added rapidly some
spirited words under his breath to the Chief, whose chin was resting on
his doubled hand.

Corte, Marco, and Giulio were full of denunciations against Milan and
the Milanese, who had sent a boy to their councils. It was Brescia and
Bergamo speaking in their jealousy, but Carlo's behaviour was odd,
and called for reproof. He had come as the deputy of Milan to meet the
Chief, and he had not spoken a serious word on the great business of
the hour, though the plot had been unfolded, the numbers sworn to, and
Brescia, and Bergamo, and Cremona, and Venice had spoken upon all points
through their emissaries, the two latter cities being represented by
Sana and Corte.

“We've had enough of this lad,” said Corte. “His laundress is following
him with a change of linen, I suppose, or it's a scent-bottle. He's an
admirable representative of the Lombard metropolis!” Corte drawled out
the words in prodigious mimicry. “If Milan has nothing better to send
than such a fellow, we'll finish without her, and shame the beast that
she is. She has been always a treacherous beast!”

“Poor Milan!” sighed the Chief; “she lies under the beak of the vulture,
and has twice been devoured; but she has a soul: she proves it. Ammiani,
too, will prove his value. I have no doubt of him. As to boys, or even
girls, you know my faith is in the young. Through them Italy lives. What
power can teach devotion to the old?”

“I thank you, signore,” Agostino gesticulated.

“But, tell me, when did you learn it, my friend?”

In answer, Agostino lifted his hand a little boy's height from the
earth.

The old man then said: “I am afraid, my dear Corte, you must accept the
fellowship of a girl as well as of a boy upon this occasion. See! our
Carlo! You recognize that dancing speck below there?--he has joined
himself--the poor lad wishes he could, I dare swear!--to another bigger
speck, which is verily a lady: who has joined herself to a donkey--a
common habit of the sex, I am told; but I know them not. That lady,
signor Ugo, is the signorina Vittoria. You stare? But, I tell you, the
game cannot go on without her; and that is why I have permitted you to
knock the ball about at your own pleasure for these forty minutes.”

Corte drew his under-lip on his reddish stubble moustache. “Are we to
have women in a conference?” he asked from eye to eye.

“Keep to the number, Ugo; and moreover, she is not a woman, but a noble
virgin. I discern a distinction, though you may not. The Vestal's fire
burns straight.”

“Who is she?”

“It rejoices me that she should be so little known. All the greater
the illumination when her light shines out! The signorina Vittoria is a
cantatrice who is about to appear upon the boards.”

“Ah! that completes it.” Corte rose to his feet with an air of
desperation. “We require to be refreshed with quavers and crescendos
and trillets! Who ever knew a singer that cared an inch of flesh for
her country? Money, flowers, flattery, vivas! but, money! money!
and Austrian as good as Italian. I've seen the accursed wenches bow
gratefully for Austrian bouquets:--bow? ay, and more; and when the
Austrian came to them red with our blood. I spit upon their polluted
cheeks! They get us an ill name wherever they go. These singers have no
country. One--I knew her--betrayed Filippo Mastalone, and sang the night
of the day he was shot. I heard the white demon myself. I could have
taken her long neck till she twisted like a serpent and hissed. May
heaven forgive me for not levelling a pistol at her head! If God, my
friends, had put the thought into my brain that night!”

A flush had deadened Corte's face to the hue of nightshade.

“You thunder in a clear atmosphere, my Ugo,” returned the old man, as he
fell back calmly at full length.

“And who is this signorina Vittoria?” cried Corte.

“A cantatrice who is about to appear upon the boards, as I have already
remarked: of La Scala, let me add, if you hold it necessary.”

“And what does she do here?”

“Her object in coming, my friend? Her object in coming is, first, to
make her reverence to one who happens to be among us this day; and
secondly, but principally, to submit a proposition to him and to us.”

“What's her age?” Corte sneered.

“According to what calendar would you have it reckoned? Wisdom would say
sixty: Father Chronos might divide that by three, and would get scarce a
month in addition, hungry as he is for her, and all of us! But Minerva's
handmaiden has no age. And now, dear Ugo, you have your opportunity to
denounce her as a convicted screecher by night. Do so.”

Corte turned his face to the Chief, and they spoke together for some
minutes: after which, having had names of noble devoted women, dead and
living, cited to him, in answer to brutal bellowings against that sex,
and hearing of the damsel under debate as one who was expected and was
welcome, he flung himself upon the ground again, inviting calamity by
premature resignation. Giulio Bandinelli stretched his hand for Carlo's
glass, and spied the approach of the signorina.

“Dark,” he said.

“A jewel of that complexion,” added Agostino, by way of comment.

“She has scorching eyes.”

“She may do mischief; she may do mischief; let it be only on the right
Side!”

“She looks fat.”

“She sits doubled up and forward, don't you see, to relieve the poor
donkey. You, my Giulio, would call a swan fat if the neck were not
always on the stretch.”

“By Bacchus! what a throat she has!”

“And well interjected, Giulio! It runs down like wine, like wine, to the
little ebbing and flowing wave! Away with the glass, my boy! You must
trust to all that's best about you to spy what's within. She makes me
young--young!”

Agostino waved his hand in the form of a salute to her on the last short
ascent. She acknowledged it gracefully; and talking at intervals to
Carlo Ammiani, who footed briskly by her side, she drew by degrees among
the eyes fixed on her, some of which were not gentle; but hers were for
the Chief, at whose feet, when dismounted by Ammiani's solicitous aid,
she would have knelt, had he not seized her by her elbows, and put his
lips to her cheek.

“The signorina Vittoria, gentlemen,” said Agostino.




CHAPTER III

The old man had introduced her with much of the pride of a father
displaying some noble child of his for the first time to admiring
friends.

“She is one of us,” he pursued; “a daughter of Italy! My daughter also;
is it not so?”

He turned to her as for a confirmation. The signorina pressed his
fingers. She was a little intimidated, and for the moment seemed shy
and girlish. The shade of her broad straw hat partly concealed her vivid
features.

“Now, gentlemen, if you please, the number is complete, and we may
proceed to business,” said Agostino, formally but as he conducted the
signorina to place her at the feet of the Chief, she beckoned to her
servant, who was holding the animal she had ridden. He came up to her,
and presented himself in something of a military posture of attention
to her commands. These were that he should take the poor brute to
water, and then lead him back to Baveno, and do duty in waiting upon
her mother. The first injunction was received in a decidedly acquiescent
manner. On hearing the second, which directed his abandonment of his
post of immediate watchfulness over her safety, the man flatly objected
with a “Signorina, no.”

He was a handsome bright-eyed fellow, with a soldier's frame and a smile
as broad and beaming as laughter, indicating much of that mixture of
acuteness, and simplicity which is a characteristic of the South, and
means no more than that the extreme vivacity of the blood exceeds at
times that of the brain.

A curious frown of half-amused astonishment hung on the signorina's
face.

“When I tell you to go, Beppo!”

At once the man threw out his fingers, accompanied by an amazingly
voluble delivery of his reasons for this revolt against her authority.
Among other things, he spoke of an oath sworn by him to a foreign
gentleman, his patron,--for whom, and for whomsoever he loved, he was
ready to pour forth his heart's blood,--to the effect that he would
never quit her side when she left the roof of her house.

“You see, Beppo,” she remonstrated, “I am among friends.”

Beppo gave a sweeping bow, but remained firm where he stood. Ammiani
cast a sharp hard look at the man.

“Do you hear the signorina's orders?”

“I hear them, signore.”

“Will you obey them?”

She interposed. “He must not hear quick words. Beppo is only showing
his love for his master and for me. But you are wrong in this case, my
Beppo. You shall give me your protection when I require it; and now, you
are sensible, and must understand that it is not wanted. I tell you to
go.”

Beppo read the eyes of his young mistress.

“Signorina,”--he stooped forward mysteriously,--“signorina, that fellow
is in Baveno. I saw him this morning.”

“Good, good. And now go, my friend.”

“The signor Agostino,” he remarked loudly, to attract the old man; “the
signor Agostino may think proper to advise you.”

“The signor Agostino will laugh at nothing that you say to-day, Beppo.
You will obey me. Go at once,” she repeated, seeing him on tiptoe to
gain Agostino's attention.

Beppo knew by her eyes that her ears were locked against him; and,
though she spoke softly, there was an imperiousness in her voice not to
be disregarded. He showed plainly by the lost rigidity of his attitude
that he was beaten and perplexed. Further expostulations being
disregarded, he turned his head to look at the poor panting beast under
his charge, and went slowly up to him: they walked off together, a
crest-fallen pair.

“You have gained the victory, signorina,” said Ugo Corte.

She replied, smiling, “My poor Beppo! it's not difficult to get the best
of those who love us.”

“Ha!” cried Agostino; “here is one of their secrets, Carlo. Take heed of
it, my boy. We shall have queens when kings are fossils, mark me!”

Ammiani muttered a courtly phrase, whereat Corte yawned in very grim
fashion.

The signorina had dropped to the grass, at a short step from the Chief,
to whom her face was now seriously given. In Ammiani's sight she looked
a dark Madonna, with the sun shining bright gold through the edges
of the summer hat, thrown back from her head. The full and steady
contemplative eyes had taken their fixed expression, after a vanishing
affectionate gaze of an instant cast upon Agostino. Attentive as they
were, light played in them like water. The countenance was vivid in
repose. She leaned slightly forward, clasping the wrist of one hand
about her knee, and the sole of one little foot showed from under her
dress.

Deliberately, but with no attempt at dramatic impressiveness, the Chief
began to speak. He touched upon the condition of Italy, and the new lilt
animating her young men and women. “I have heard many good men jeer,”
 he said, “at our taking women to our counsel, accepting their help, and
putting a great stake upon their devotion. You have read history, and
you know what women can accomplish. They may be trained, equally as we
are, to venerate the abstract idea of country, and be a sacrifice to it.
Without their aid, and the fire of a fresh life being kindled in their
bosoms, no country that has lain like ours in the death-trance can
revive. In the death-trance, I say, for Italy does not die!”

“True,” said other voices.

“We have this belief in the eternal life of our country, and the belief
is the life itself. But let no strong man among us despise the help of
women. I have seen our cause lie desperate, and those who despaired
of it were not women. Women kept the flame alive. They worship in the
temple of the cause.”

Ammiani's eyes dwelt fervidly upon the signorina. Her look, which was
fastened upon the Chief, expressed a mind that listened to strange
matter concerning her very little. But when the plans for the rising
of the Bergamascs and Brescians, the Venetians, the Bolognese, the
Milanese, all the principal Northern cities, were recited, with a
practical emphasis thrown upon numbers, upon the readiness of the
organized bands, the dispositions of the leaders, and the amount of
resistance to be expected at the various points indicated for the
outbreak, her hands disjoined, and she stretched her fingers to the
grass, supporting herself so, while her extended chin and animated
features told how eagerly her spirit drank at positive springs, and
thirsted for assurance of the coming storm.

“It is decided that Milan gives the signal,” said the Chief; and a
light, like the reflection of a beacon-fire upon the night, flashed over
her.

He was pursuing, when Ugo Corte smote the air with his nervous fingers,
crying out passionately, “Bunglers! are we again to wait for them, and
hear that fifteen patriots have stabbed a Croat corporal, and wrestled
hotly with a lieutenant of the guard? I say they are bunglers. They
never mean the thing. Fifteen! There were just three Milanese among the
last lot--the pick of the city; and the rest were made up of Trentini,
and our lads from Bergamo and Brescia; and the order from the Council
was, 'Go and do the business!' which means, 'Go and earn your ounce of
Austrian lead.' They went, and we gave fifteen true men for one poor
devil of a curst tight blue-leg. They can play the game on if we give
them odds like that. Milan burns bad powder, and goes off like a drugged
pistol. It's a nest of bunglers, and may it be razed! We could do
without it, and well! If it were a family failing, should not I too
be trusting them? My brother was one of the fifteen who marched out as
targets to try the skill of those hell-plumed Tyrolese: and they did it
thoroughly--shot him straight here.” Corte struck his chest. “He gave
a jump and a cry. Was it a viva for Milan? They swear that it was, and
they can't translate from a living mouth, much more from a dead one; but
I know my Niccolo better. I have kissed his lips a thousand times, and
I know the poor boy meant, 'Scorn and eternal distrust of such
peddling conspirators as these!' I can deal with traitors, but these
flash-in-the-pan plotters--these shaking, jelly-bodied patriots!--trust
to them again? Rather draw lots for another fifteen to bare their
breasts and bandage their eyes, and march out in the grey morning, while
the stupid Croat corporal goes on smoking his lumpy pipe! We shall hear
that Milan is moving; we shall rise; we shall be hot at it; and the news
will come that Milan has merely yawned and turned over to sleep on the
other side. Twice she has done this trick, and the garrison there has
sent five regiments to finish us--teach us to sleep soundly likewise! I
say, let it be Bergamo; or be it Brescia, if you like; or Venice: she
is ready. You trust to Milan, and you are fore-doomed. I would swear it
with this hand in the flames. She give the signal? Shut your eyes, cross
your hands flat on your breasts: you are dead men if you move. She lead
the way? Spin on your heels, and you have followed her!”

Corte had spoken in a thick difficult voice, that seemed to require the
aid of his vehement gestures to pour out as it did like a water-pipe in
a hurricane of rain. He ceased, red almost to blackness, and knotted his
arms, that were big as the cable of a vessel. Not a murmur followed his
speech. The word was, given to the Chief, and he resumed:--“You have
a personal feeling in this case, Ugo. You have not heard me. I came
through Paris. A rocket will soon shoot up from Paris that will be
a signal for Christendom. The keen French wit is sick of its
compromise-king. All Europe is in convulsions in a few months: to-morrow
it may be. The elements are in the hearts of the people, and nothing
will contain them. We have sown them to reap them. The sowing asks for
persistency; but the reaping demands skill and absolute truthfulness.
We have now one of those occasions coming which are the flowers to
be plucked by resolute and worthy hands: they are the tests of our
sincerity. This time now rapidly approaching will try us all, and we
must be ready for it. If we have believed in it, we stand prepared. If
we have conceived our plan of action in purity of heart, we shall be
guided to discern the means which may serve us. You will know speedily
what it is that has prompted you to move. If passion blindfolds you, if
you are foiled by a prejudice, I also shall know. My friend, the
nursing of a single antipathy is a presumption that your motive force is
personal--whether the thirst for vengeance or some internal union of
a hundred indistinct little fits of egoism. I have seen brave and even
noble men fail at the ordeal of such an hour: not fail in courage, not
fail in the strength of their desire; that was the misery for them!
They failed because midway they lost the vision to select the right
instruments put in our way by heaven. That vision belongs solely to such
as have clean and disciplined hearts. The hope in the bosom of a
man whose fixed star is Humanity becomes a part of his blood, and is
extinguished when his blood flows no more. To conquer him, the principle
of life must be conquered. And he, my friend, will use all, because he
serves all. I need not touch on Milan.”

The signorina drew in her breath quickly, as if in this abrupt close she
had a revelation of the Chief's whole meaning, and was startled by the
sudden unveiling of his mastery. Her hands hung loose; her figure was
tremulous. A murmur from Corte jarred within her like a furious discord,
but he had not offended by refusing to disclaim his error, and had
simply said in a gruff acquiescent way, “Proceed.” Her sensations of
surprise at the singular triumph of the Chief made her look curiously
into the faces of the other men; but the pronouncing of her name engaged
her attention.

“Your first night is the night of the fifteenth of next month?”

“It is, signore,” she replied, abashed to find herself speaking with him
who had so moved her.

“There is no likelihood of a postponement?”

“I am certain, signore, that I shall be ready.”

“There are no squabbles of any serious kind among the singers?”

A soft dimple played for a moment on her lips. “I have heard something.”

“Among the women?”

“Yes, and the men.”

“But the men do not concern you?”

“No, signore. Except that the women twist them.”

Agostino chuckled audibly. The Chief resumed:

“You believe, notwithstanding, that all will go well? The opera will be
acted; and you will appear in it?”

“Yes, signore. I know one who has determined on it, and can do it.”

“Good. The opera is Camilla?”

She was answering with an affirmative, when Agostino broke
in,--“Camilla! And honour to whom honour is due! Let Caesar claim
the writing of the libretto, if it be Caesar's! It has passed the
censorship, signed Agostino Balderini--a disaffected person out of
Piedmont, rendered tame and fangless by a rigorous imprisonment. The
sources of the tale, O ye grave Signori Tedeschi? The sources are
partly to be traced to a neat little French vaudeville, very
sparkling--Camille, or the Husband Asserted; and again to a certain
Chronicle that may be mediaeval, may be modern, and is just, as the
great Shakespeare would say, 'as you like it.'”

Agostino recited some mock verses, burlesquing the ordinary libretti,
and provoked loud laughter from Carlo Ammiani, who was familiar enough
with the run of their nonsense.

“Camilla is the bride of Camillo. I give to her all the brains, which
is a modern idea, quite! He does all the mischief, which is possibly
mediaeval. They have both an enemy, which is mediaeval and modern. None
of them know exactly what they are about; so there you have the modern,
the mediaeval, and the antique, all in one. Finally, my friends, Camilla
is something for you to digest at leisure. The censorship swallowed it
at a gulp. Never was bait so handsomely taken! At present I have the joy
of playing my fish. On the night of the fifteenth I land him. Camilla
has a mother. Do you see? That mother is reported, is generally
conceived, as dead. Do you see further? Camilla's first song treats of a
dream she has had of that mother. Our signorina shall not be troubled to
favour you with a taste of it, or, by Bacchus and his Indian nymphs, I
should speedily behold you jumping like peas in a pan, like trout on a
bank! The earth would be hot under you, verily! As I was remarking, or
meant to be, Camilla and her husband disagree, having agreed to. 'Tis a
plot to deceive Count Orso--aha? You are acquainted with Count Orso! He
is Camilla's antenuptial guardian. Now you warm to it! In that condition
I leave you. Perhaps my child here will give you a taste of her voice.
The poetry does much upon reflection, but it has to ripen within you--a
matter of time. Wed this voice to the poetry, and it finds passage
'twixt your ribs, as on the point of a driven blade. Do I cry the
sweetness and the coolness of my melons? Not I! Try them.”

The signorina put her hand out for the scroll he was unfolding, and cast
her eyes along bars of music, while Agostino called a “Silenzio tutti!”
 She sang one verse, and stopped for breath.

Between her dismayed breathings she said to the Chief:--“Believe me,
signore, I can be trusted to sing when the time comes.”

“Sing on, my blackbird--my viola!” said Agostino. “We all trust you.
Look at Colonel Corte, and take him for Count Orso. Take me for pretty
Camillo. Take Marco for Michiela; Giulio for Leonardo; Carlo for Cupid.
Take the Chief for the audience. Take him for a frivolous public. Ah, my
Pippo!” (Agostino laughed aside to him). “Let us lead off with a lighter
piece; a trifle-tra-la-la! and then let the frisky piccolo be drowned
in deep organ notes, as on some occasions in history the people overrun
certain puling characters. But that, I confess, is an illustration
altogether out of place, and I'll simply jot it down in my notebook.”

Agostino had talked on to let her gain confidence. When he was silent
she sang from memory. It was a song of flourishes: one of those
be-flowered arias in which the notes flicker and leap like young
flames. Others might have sung it; and though it spoke favourably of her
aptitude and musical education, and was of a quality to enrapture easy,
merely critical audiences, it won no applause from these men. The
effect produced by it was exhibited in the placid tolerance shown by the
uplifting of Ugo Corte's eyebrows, which said, “Well, here's a voice,
certainly.” His subsequent look added, “Is this what we have come hither
to hear?”

Vittoria saw the look. “Am I on my trial before you?” she thought; and
the thought nerved her throat. She sang in strong and grave contralto
tones, at first with shut eyes. The sense of hostility left her, and
left her soul free, and she raised them. The song was of Camilla dying.
She pardons the treacherous hand, commending her memory and the strength
of her faith to her husband:--

     “Beloved, I am quickly out of sight:
     I pray that you will love more than my dust.

     Were death defeat, much weeping would be right;
     'Tis victory when it leaves surviving trust.
     You will not find me save when you forget
     Earth's feebleness, and come to faith, my friend,
     For all Humanity doth owe a debt
     To all Humanity, until the end.”

Agostino glanced at the Chief to see whether his ear had caught note of
his own language.

The melancholy severity of that song of death changed to a song of
prophetic triumph. The signorina stood up. Camilla has thrown off the
mask, and has sung the name “Italia!” At the recurrence of it the men
rose likewise.

     “Italia, Italia, shall be free!”

Vittoria gave the inspiration of a dying voice: the conquest of death by
an eternal truth seemed to radiate from her. Voice and features were as
one expression of a rapture of belief built upon pathetic trustfulness.

     “Italia, Italia shall be free!”

She seized the hearts of those hard and serious men as a wind takes the
strong oak-trees, and rocks them on their knotted roots, and leaves them
with the song of soaring among their branches. Italy shone about her;
the lake, the plains, the peaks, and the shouldering flushed snowridges.
Carlo Ammiani breathed as one who draws in fire. Grizzled Agostino
glittered with suppressed emotion, like a frosted thorn-bush in the
sunlight. Ugo Corte had his thick brows down, as a man who is reading
iron matter. The Chief alone showed no sign beyond a half lifting of
the hand, and a most luminous fixed observation of the fair young woman,
from whom power was an emanation, free of effort. The gaze was sad
in its thoughtfulness, such as our feelings translate of the light of
evening.

She ceased, and he said, “You sing on the night of the fifteenth?”

“I do, signore.”

“It is your first appearance?”

She bent her head.

“And you will be prepared on that night to sing this song?”

“Yes, signore.”

“Save in the event of your being forbidden?”

“Unless you shall forbid me, I will sing it, signore.”

“Should they imprison you?--”

“If they shoot me I shall be satisfied to know that I have sung a song
that cannot be forgotten.”

The Chief took her hand in a gentle grasp.

“Such as you will help to give our Italy freedom. You hold the sacred
flame, and know you hold it in trust.”

“Friends,”--he turned to his companions,--“you have heard what will be
the signal for Milan.”




CHAPTER IV

It was a surprise to all of them, save to Agostino Balderini, who passed
his inspecting glance from face to face, marking the effect of
the announcement. Corte gazed at her heavily, but not altogether
disapprovingly. Giulio Bandinelli and Marco Sana, though evidently
astonished, and to some extent incredulous, listened like the perfectly
trusty lieutenants in an enterprise which they were. But Carlo Ammiani
stood horror-stricken. The blood had left his handsome young olive-hued
face, and his eyes were on the signorina, large with amazement, from
which they deepened to piteousness of entreaty.

“Signorina!--you! Can it be true? Do you know?--do you mean it?”

“What, signor Carlo?”

“This; will you venture to do such a thing?”

“Oh, will I venture? What can you think of me? It is my own request.”

“But, signorina, in mercy, listen and consider.”

Carlo turned impetuously to the Chief. “The signorina can't know the
danger she is running. She will be seized on the boards, and shut up
between four walls before a man of us will be ready,--or more than one,”
 he added softly. “The house is sure to be packed for a first night; and
the Polizia have a suspicion of her. She has been off her guard in the
Conservatorio; she has talked of a country called Italy; she has been
indiscreet;--pardon, pardon, signorina! but it is true that she has
spoken out from her noble heart. And this opera! Are they fools?--they
must see through it. It will never,--it can't possibly be reckoned on
to appear. I knew that the signorina was heart and soul with us; but
who could guess that her object was to sacrifice herself in the front
rank,--to lead a forlorn hope! I tell you it's like a Pagan rite. You
are positively slaying a victim. I beg you all to look at the case
calmly!”

A burst of laughter checked him; for his seniors by many years could not
hear such veteran's counsel from a hurried boy without being shrewdly
touched by the humour of it, while one or two threw a particular irony
into their tones.

“When we do slay a victim, we will come to you as our augur, my Carlo,”
 said Agostino.

Corte was less gentle. As a Milanese and a mere youth Ammiani was
antipathetic to Corte, who closed his laughter with a windy rattle of
his lips, and a “pish!” of some emphasis.

Carlo was quick to give him a challenging frown.

“What is it?” Corte bent his head back, as if inquiringly.

“It's I who claim that question by right,” said Carlo.

“You are a boy.”

“I have studied war.”

“In books.”

“With brains, Colonel Corte.”

“War is a matter of blows, my little lad.”

“Let me inform you, signor Colonel, that war is not a game between
bulls, to be played with the horns of the head.”

“You are prepared to instruct me?” The fiery Bergamasc lifted his
eyebrows.

“Nay, nay!” said Agostino. “Between us two first;” and he grasped
Carlo's arm, saying in an underbreath, “Your last retort was too
long-winded. In these conflicts you must be quick, sharp as a
rifle-crack that hits echo on the breast-bone and makes her cry out.
I correct a student in the art of war.” Then aloud: “My opera, young
man!--well, it's my libretto, and you know we writers always say 'my
opera' when we have put the pegs for the voice; you are certainly aware
that we do. How dare you to make calumnious observations upon my opera?
Is it not the ripe and admirable fruit of five years of confinement? Are
not the lines sharp, the stanzas solid? and the stuff, is it not good?
Is not the subject simple, pure from offence to sensitive authority,
constitutionally harmless? Reply!”

“It's transparent to any but asses,” said Carlo.

“But if it has passed the censorship? You are guilty, my boy, of
bestowing upon those highly disciplined gentlemen who govern your famous
city--what title? I trust a prophetic one, since that it comes from an
animal whose custom is to turn its back before it delivers a blow,
and is, they remark, fonder of encountering dead lions than live ones.
Still, it is you who are indiscreet,--eminently so, I must add, if you
will look lofty. If my opera has passed the censorship! eh, what have
you to say?”

Carlo endured this banter till the end of it came.

“And you--you encourage her!” he cried wrathfully. “You know what the
danger is for her, if they once lay hands on her. They will have her
in Verona in four-and-twenty hours; through the gates of the Adige in a
couple of days, and at Spielberg, or some other of their infernal dens
of groans, within a week. Where is the chance of a rescue then? They
torture, too, they torture! It's a woman; and insult will be one mode of
torturing her. They can use rods--”

The excited Southern youth was about to cover his face, but caught back
his hands, clenching them.

“All this,” said Agostino, “is an evasion, manifestly, of the question
concerning my opera, on which you have thought proper to cast a slur.
The phrase, 'transparent to any but asses,' may not be absolutely
objectionable, for transparency is, as the critics rightly insist,
meritorious in a composition. And, according to the other view, if we
desire our clever opponents to see nothing in something, it is
notably skilful to let them see through it. You perceive, my Carlo.
Transparency, then, deserves favourable comment. So, I do not complain
of your phrase, but I had the unfortunate privilege of hearing it
uttered. The method of delivery scarcely conveyed a compliment. Will you
apologize?”

Carlo burst from him with a vehement question to the Chief: “Is it
decided?”

“It is, my friend,” was the reply.

“Decided! She is doomed! Signorina! what can you know of this frightful
risk? You are going to the slaughter. You will be seized before the
first verse is out of your lips, and once in their clutches, you will
never breathe free air again. It's madness!--ah, forgive me!--yes,
madness! For you shut your eyes; you rush into the trap blindfolded. And
that is how you serve our Italy! She sees you an instant, and you are
caught away;--and you who might serve her, if you would, do you think
you can move dungeon walls?”

“Perhaps, if I have been once seen, I shall not be forgotten,” said
the signorina smoothly, and then cast her eyes down, as if she felt the
burden of a little possible accusation of vanity in this remark. She
raised them with fire.

“No; never!” exclaimed Carlo. “But, now you are ours. And--surely it is
not quite decided?”

He had spoken imploringly to the Chief. “Not irrevocably?” he added.

“Irrevocably!”

“Then she is lost!”

“For shame, Carlo Ammiani;” said old Agostino, casting his sententious
humours aside. “Do you not hear? It is decided! Do you wish to rob her
of her courage, and see her tremble? It's her scheme and mine: a case
where an old head approves a young one. The Chief says Yes! and you
bellow still! Is it a Milanese trick? Be silent.”

“Be silent!” echoed Carlo. “Do you remember the beast Marschatska's
bet?” The allusion was to a black incident concerning a young Italian
ballet girl who had been carried off by an Austrian officer, under the
pretext of her complicity in one of the antecedent conspiracies.

“He rendered payment for it,” said Agostino.

“He perished; yes! as we shake dust to the winds; but she!--it's
terrible! You place women in the front ranks--girls! What can
defenceless creatures do? Would you let the van-regiment in battle be
the one without weapons? It's slaughter. She's like a lamb to them. You
hold up your jewel to the enemy, and cry, 'Come and take it.' Think
of the insults! think of the rough hands, and foul mouths! She will be
seized on the boards--”

“Not if you keep your tongue from wagging,” interposed Ugo Corte,
fevered by this unseasonable exhibition of what was to him manifestly
a lover's frenzied selfishness. He moved off, indifferent to Carlo's
retort. Marco Sana and Giulio Bandinelli were already talking aside with
the Chief.

“Signor Carlo, not a hand shall touch me,” said the signorina. “And I am
not a lamb, though it is good of you to think me one. I passed through
the streets of Milan in the last rising. I was unharmed. You must have
some confidence in me.”

“Signorina, there's the danger,” rejoined Carlo. “You trust to your good
angels once, twice--the third time they fail you! What are you among
a host of armed savages? You would be tossed like weed on the sea. In
pity, do not look so scornfully! No, there is no unjust meaning in it;
but you despise me for seeing danger. Can nothing persuade you? And,
besides,” he addressed the Chief, who alone betrayed no signs of
weariness; “listen, I beg of you. Milan wants no more than a signal. She
does not require to be excited. I came charged with several proposals
for giving the alarm. Attend, you others! The night of the Fifteenth
comes; it is passing like an ordinary night. At twelve a fire-balloon is
seen in the sky. Listen, in the name of saints and devils!”

But even the Chief was observed to show signs of amusement, and the
gravity of the rest forsook them altogether at the display of this
profound and original conspiratorial notion.

“Excellent! excellent! my Carlo,” said old Agostino, cheerfully. “You
have thought. You must have thought, or whence such a conception? But,
you really mistake. It is not the garrison whom we desire to put on
their guard. By no means. We are not in the Imperial pay. Probably your
balloon is to burst in due time, and, wind permitting, disperse printed
papers all over the city?”

“What if it is?” cried Carlo fiercely.

“Exactly. I have divined your idea. You have thought, or, to correct the
tense, are thinking, which is more hopeful, though it may chance not to
seem so meritorious. But, if yours are the ideas of full-blown jackets,
bear in mind that our enemies are coated and breeched. It may be
creditable to you that your cunning is not the cunning of the serpent;
to us it would be more valuable if it were. Continue.”

“Oh! there are a thousand ways.” Carlo controlled himself with a sharp
screw of all his muscles. “I simply wish to save the signorina from an
annoyance.”

“Very mildly put,” Agostino murmured assentingly.

“In our Journal,” said Carlo, holding out the palm of one hand to
dot the forefinger of the other across it, by way of personal
illustration--“in our Journal we might arrange for certain letters to
recur at distinct intervals in Roman capitals, which might spell out,
'This Night AT Twelve,' or 'At Once.'”

“Quite as ingenious, but on the present occasion erring on the side of
intricacy. Aha! you want to increase the sale of your Journal, do you,
my boy? The rogue!”

With which, and a light slap over Carlo's shoulder, Agostino left him.

The aspect of his own futile proposals stared the young man in the face
too forcibly for him to nurse the spark of resentment which was struck
out in the turmoil of his bosom. He veered, as if to follow Agostino,
and remained midway, his chest heaving, and his eyelids shut.

“Signor Carlo, I have not thanked you.” He heard Vittoria speak. “I know
that a woman should never attempt to do men's work. The Chief will tell
you that we must all serve now, and all do our best. If we fail, and
they put me to great indignity, I promise you that I will not live. I
would give this up to be done by anyone else who could do it better. It
is in my hands, and my friends must encourage me.”

“Ah, signorina!” the young man sighed bitterly. The knowledge that he
had already betrayed himself in the presence of others too far, and the
sob in his throat labouring to escape, kept him still.

A warning call from Ugo Corte drew their attention. Close by the chalet
where the first climbers of the mountain had refreshed themselves, Beppo
was seen struggling to secure the arms of a man in a high-crowned green
Swiss hat, who was apparently disposed to give the signorina's faithful
servant some trouble. After gazing a minute at this singular contention,
she cried--“It's the same who follows me everywhere!”

“And you will not believe you are suspected,” murmured Carlo in her ear.

“A spy?” Sana queried, showing keen joy at the prospect of scotching
such a reptile on the lonely height. Corte went up to the Chief. They
spoke briefly together, making use of notes and tracings on paper. The
Chief then said “Adieu” to the signorina. It was explained to the rest
by Corte that he had a meeting to attend near Pella about noon, and must
be in Fobello before midnight. Thence his way would be to Genoa.

“So, you are resolved to give another trial to our crowned
ex-Carbonaro,” said Agostino.

“Without leaving him an initiative this time!” and the Chief embraced
the old man. “You know me upon that point. I cannot trust him. I do not.
But, if we make such a tide in Lombardy that his army must be drawn into
it, is such an army to be refused? First, the tide, my friend! See to
that.”

“The king is our instrument!” cried Carlo Ammiani, brightening.

“Yes, if we were particularly well skilled in the use of that kind of
instrument,” Agostino muttered.

He stood apart while the Chief said a few words to Carlo, which made the
blood play vividly across the visage of the youth. Carlo tried humbly
to expostulate once or twice. In the end his head was bowed, and he
signified a dumb acquiescence.

“Once more, good-bye.” The Chief addressed the signorina in English.

She replied in the same tongue, “Good-bye,” tremulously; and passion
mounting on it, added--“Oh! when shall I see you again?”

“When Rome is purified to be a fit place for such as you.”

In another minute he was hidden on the slope of the mountain lying
toward Orta.




CHAPTER V

Beppo had effected a firm capture of his man some way down the slope.
But it was a case of check that entirely precluded his own free
movements. They hung together intertwisted in the characters of specious
pacificator and appealing citizen, both breathless.

“There! you want to hand me up neatly; I know your vanity, my Beppo; and
you don't even know my name,” said the prisoner.

“I know your ferret of a face well enough,” said Beppo. “You dog the
signorina. Come up, and don't give trouble.”

“Am I not a sheep? You worry me. Let me go.”

“You're a wriggling eel.”

“Catch me fast by the tail then, and don't hold me by the middle.”

“You want frightening, my pretty fellow!”

“If that's true, my Beppo, somebody made a mistake in sending you to do
it. Stop a moment. You're blown. I think you gulp down your minestra too
hot; you drink beer.”

“You dog the signorina! I swore to scotch you at last.”

“I left Milan for the purpose--don't you see? Act fairly, my Beppo, and
let us go up to the signorina together decently.”

“Ay, ay, my little reptile! You'll find no Austrians here. Cry out to
them to come to you from Baveno. If the Motterone grew just one tree!
Saints! one would serve.”

“Why don't you--fool that you are, my Beppo!--pray to the saints
earlier? Trees don't grow from heaven.”

“You'll be going there soon, and you'll know better about it.”

“Thanks to the Virgin, then, we shall part at some time or other!”

The struggles between them continued sharply during this exchange
of intellectual shots; but hearing Ugo Corte's voice, the prisoner's
confident audacity forsook him, and he drew a long tight face like the
mask of an admonitory exclamation addressed to himself from within.

“Stand up straight!” the soldier's command was uttered.

Even Beppo was amazed to see that the man had lost the power to obey or
to speak.

Corte grasped him under the arm-pit. With the force of his huge fist he
swung him round and stretched him out at arm's length, all collar and
shanks. The man hung like a mole from the twig. Yet, while Beppo poured
out the tale of his iniquities, his eyes gave the turn of a twinkle,
showing that he could have answered one whom he did not fear. The
charge brought against him was, that for the last six months he had been
untiringly spying on the signorina.

Corte stamped his loose feet to earth, shook him and told him to walk
aloft. The flexible voluble fellow had evidently become miserably
disconcerted. He walked in trepidation, speechless, and when
interrogated on the height his eyes flew across the angry visages with
dismal uncertainty. Agostino perceived that he had undoubtedly not
expected to come among them, and forthwith began to excite Giulio and
Marco to the worst suspicions, in order to indulge his royal poetic soul
with a study of a timorous wretch pushed to anticipations of extremity.

“The execution of a spy,” he preluded, “is the signal for the ringing
of joy-bells on this earth; not only because he is one of a pestiferous
excess, in point of numbers, but that he is no true son of earth. He
escaped out of hell's doors on a windy day, and all that we do is to
puff out a bad light, and send him back. Look at this fellow in whom
conscience is operating so that he appears like a corked volcano! You
can see that he takes Austrian money; his skin has got to be the exact
colour of Munz. He has the greenish-yellow eyes of those elective,
thrice-abhorred vampyres who feed on patriot-blood. He is condemned
without trial by his villainous countenance, like an ungrammatical
preface to a book. His tongue refuses to confess, but nature is
stronger:--observe his knees. Now this is guilt. It is execrable guilt.
He is a nasty object. Nature has in her wisdom shortened his stature to
indicate that it is left to us to shorten the growth of his offending
years. Now, you dangling soul! answer me:--what name hailed you when on
earth?”

The fan, with no clearly serviceable tongue, articulated, “Luigi.”

“Luigi! the name Christian and distinctive. The name historic:-Luigi
Porco?”

“Luigi Saracco, signore.”

“Saracco: Saracco: very possibly a strip of the posterity of cut-throat
Moors. To judge by your face, a Moor undoubtedly: glib, slippery! with
a body that slides and a soul that jumps. Taken altogether, more serpent
than eagle. I misdoubt that little quick cornering eye of yours. Do you
ever remember to have blushed?”

“No, signore,” said Luigi.

“You spy upon the signorina, do you?”

“You have Beppo's word for that,” interposed Marco Sana, growling.

“And you are found spying on the mountain this particular day! Luigi
Saracco, you are a fellow of a tremendous composition. A goose walking
into a den of foxes is alone to be compared to you,--if ever such goose
was! How many of us did you count, now, when you were, say, a quarter of
a mile below?”

Marco interposed again: “He has already seen enough up here to make a
rope of florins.”

“The fellow's eye takes likenesses,” said Giulio.

Agostino's question was repeated by Corte, and so sternly that Luigi,
beholding kindness upon no other face save Vittoria's, watched her, and
muttering “Six,” blinked his keen black eyes piteously to get her sign
of assent to his hesitated naming of that number. Her mouth and the turn
of her head were expressive to him, and he cried “Seven.”

“So; first six, and next seven,” said Corte.

“Six, I meant, without the signorina,” Luigi explained.

“You saw six of us without the signorina! You see we are six here,
including the signorina. Where is the seventh?”

Luigi tried to penetrate Vittoria's eyes for a proper response; but
she understood the grave necessity for getting the full extent of his
observations out of him, and she looked as remorseless as the men. He
feigned stupidity and sullenness, rage and cunning, in quick succession.

“Who was the seventh?” said Carlo.

“Was it the king?” Luigi asked.

This was by just a little too clever; and its cleverness, being seen,
magnified the intended evasion so as to make it appear to them that
Luigi knew well the name of the seventh.

Marco thumped a hand on his shoulder, shouting--“Here; speak out! You
saw seven of us. Where has the seventh one gone?”

Luigi's wits made a dash at honesty. “Down Orta, signore.”

“And down Orta, I think, you will go; deeper down than you may like.”

Corte now requested Vittoria to stand aside. He motioned to her with his
hand to stand farther, and still farther off; and finally told Carlo to
escort her to Baveno. She now began to think that the man Luigi was in
some perceptible danger, nor did Ammiani disperse the idea.

“If he is a spy, and if he has seen the Chief, we shall have to detain
him for at least four-and-twenty hours,” he said, “or do worse.”

“But, Signor Carlo,”--Vittoria made appeal to his humanity,--“do they
mean, if they decide that he is guilty, to hurt him?”

“Tell me, signorina, what punishment do you imagine a spy deserves?”

“To be called one!”

Carlo smiled at her lofty method of dealing with the animal.

“Then you presume him to have a conscience?”

“I am sure, Signor Carlo, that I could make him loathe to be called a
spy.”

They were slowly pacing from the group, and were on the edge of the
descent, when the signorina's name was shrieked by Luigi. The man came
running to her for protection, Beppo and the rest at his heels. She
allowed him to grasp her hand.

“After all, he is my spy; he does belong to me,” she said, still
speaking on to Carlo. “I must beg your permission, Colonel Corte and
Signor Marco, to try an experiment. The Signor Carlo will not believe
that a spy can be ashamed of his name.--Luigi!”

“Signorina!”--he shook his body over her hand with a most plaintive
utterance.

“You are my countryman, Luigi?”

“Yes, signorina.”

“You are an Italian?”

“Certainly, signorina!”

“A spy!”

Vittoria had not always to lift her voice in music for it to sway the
hearts of men. She spoke the word very simply in a mellow soft tone.
Luigi's blood shot purple. He thrust his fists against his ears.

“See, Signor Carlo,” she said; “I was right. Luigi, you will be a spy no
more?”

Carlo Ammiani happened to be rolling a cigarette-paper. She put out
her fingers for it, and then reached it to Luigi, who accepted it with
singular contortions of his frame, declaring that he would confess
everything to her. “Yes, signorina, it is true; I am a spy on you. I
know the houses you visit. I know you eat too much chocolate for your
voice. I know you are the friend of the Signora Laura, the widow of
Giacomo Piaveni, shot--shot on Annunciation Day. The Virgin bless him!
I know the turning of every street from your house near the Duomo to
the signora's. You go nowhere else, except to the maestro's. And it's
something to spy upon you. But think of your Beppo who spies upon me!
And your little mother, the lady most excellent, is down in Baveno, and
she is always near you when you make an expedition. Signorina, I know
you would not pay your Beppo for spying upon me. Why does he do it? I
do not sing 'Italia, Italia shall be free!' I have heard you when I was
under the maestro's windows; and once you sang it to the Signor Agostino
Balderini. Indeed, signorina, I am a sort of guardian of your voice. It
is not gold of the Tedeschi I get from the Signor Antonio Pericles.”

At the mention of this name, Agostino and Vittoria laughed out.

“You are in the pay of the Signor Antonio-Pericles,” said Agostino.
“Without being in our pay, you have done us the service to come up here
among us! Bravo! In return for your disinterestedness, we kick you down,
either upon Baveno or upon Stresa, or across the lake, if you prefer
it.--The man is harmless. He is hired by a particular worshipper of the
signorina's voice, who affects to have first discovered it when she
was in England, and is a connoisseur, a millionaire, a Greek, a rich
scoundrel, with one indubitable passion, for which I praise him. We will
let his paid eavesdropper depart, I think. He is harmless.”

Neither Ugo nor Marco was disposed to allow any description of spy to
escape unscotched. Vittoria saw that Luigi's looks were against him, and
whispered: “Why do you show such cunning eyes, Luigi?”

He replied: “Signorina, take me out of their hearing, and I will tell
you everything.”

She walked aside. He seemed immediately to be inspired with confidence,
and stretched his fingers in the form of a grasshopper, at which sight
they cried: “He knows Barto Rizzo--this rascal!” They plied him with
signs and countersigns, and speedily let him go. There ensued a sharp
snapping of altercation between Luigi and Beppo. Vittoria had to order
Beppo to stand back.

“It is a poor dog, not of a good breed, signorina,” Luigi said, casting
a tolerant glance over his shoulder. “Faithful, but a poor nose. Ah! you
gave me this cigarette. Not the Virgin could have touched my marrow as
you did. That's to be remembered by-and-by. Now, you are going to sing
on the night of the fifteenth of September. Change that night.
The Signor Antonio-Pericles watches you, and he is a friend of the
Government, and the Government is snoring for you to think it asleep.
The Signor Antonio-Pericles pacifies the Tedeschi, but he will know all
that you are doing, and how easy it will be, and how simple, for you to
let me know what you think he ought to know, and just enough to keep
him comfortable! So we work like a machine, signorina. Only, not through
that Beppo, for he is vain of his legs, and his looks, and his service,
and because he has carried a gun and heard it go off. Yes; I am a spy.
But I am honest. I, too, have visited England. One can be honest and
a spy. Signorina, I have two arms, but only one heart. If you will
be gracious and consider! Say, here are two hands. One hand does this
thing, one hand does that thing, and that thing wipes out this thing.
It amounts to clear reasoning! Here are two eyes. Were they meant to
see nothing but one side! Here is a tongue with a line down the middle
almost to the tip of it--which is for service. That Beppo couldn't
deal double, if he would; for he is imperfectly designed--a mere dog's
pattern! But, only one heart, signorina--mind that. I will never
forget the cigarette. I shall smoke it before I leave the mountain, and
think--oh!”

Having illustrated the philosophy of his system, Luigi continued: “I
am going to tell you everything. Pray, do not look on Beppo! This is
important. The Signor Antonio-Pericles sent me to spy on you, because he
expects some people to come up the mountain, and you know them; and
one is an Austrian officer, and he is an Englishman by birth, and he
is coming to meet some English friends who enter Italy from Switzerland
over the Moro, and easily up here on mules or donkeys from Pella. The
Signor Antonio-Pericles has gold ears for everything that concerns
the signorina. 'A patriot is she!' he says; and he is jealous of your
English friends. He thinks they will distract you from your studies;
and perhaps”--Luigi nodded sagaciously before he permitted himself to
say--“perhaps he is jealous in another way. I have heard him speak like
a sonnet of the signorina's beauty. The Signor Antonio-Pericles thinks
that you have come here to-day to meet them. When he heard that you
were going to leave Milan for Baveno, he was mad, and with two fists up,
against all English persons. The Englishman who is an Austrian officer
is quartered at Verona, and the Signor Antonio Pericles said that the
Englishman should not meet you yet, if he could help it.”

Victoria stood brooding. “Who can it be,--who is an Englishman, and an
Austrian officer, and knows me?”

“Signorina, I don't know names. Behold, that Beppo is approaching like
the snow! What I entreat is, that the signorina will wait a little for
the English party, if they come, so that I may have something to tell
my patron. To invent upon nothing is most unpleasant, and the Signor
Antonio can soon perceive whether one swims with corks. Signorina, I
can dance on one rope--I am a man. I am not a midge--I cannot dance upon
nothing.”

The days of Vittoria's youth had been passed in England. It was not
unknown to her that old English friends were on the way to Italy;
the recollection of a quiet and a buried time put a veil across her
features. She was perplexed by the mention of the Austrian officer by
Luigi, as one may be who divines the truth too surely, but will not
accept it for its loathsomeness. There were Englishmen in the army of
Austria. Could one of them be this one whom she had cared for when she
was a girl? It seemed hatefully cruel to him to believe it. She spoke
to Agostino, begging him to remain with her on the height awhile to see
whether the Signor Antonio-Pericles was right; to see whether Luigi was
a truth-teller; to see whether these English persons were really coming.
“Because,” she said, “if they do come, it will at once dissolve any
suspicions you may have of this Luigi. And I always long so much to
know if the Signor Antonio is correct. I have never yet known him to be
wrong.”

“And you want to see these English,” said Agostino. He frowned.

“Only to hear them. They shall not recognize me. I have now another
name; and I am changed. My hat is enough to hide me. Let me hear them
talk a little. You and the Signor Carlo will stay with me, and when they
come, if they do come, I will remain no longer than just sufficient to
make sure. I would refuse to know any of them before the night of the
fifteenth; I want my strength too much. I shall have to hear a misery
from them; I know it, I feel it; it turns my blood. But let me hear
their voices! England is half my country, though I am so willing to
forget her and give all my life to Italy. Stay with me, dear friend, my
best father! humour me, for you know that I am always charming when I am
humoured.”

Agostino pressed his finger on a dimple in her cheeks. “You can afford
to make such a confession as that to a greybeard. The day is your own.
Bear in mind that you are so situated that it will be prudent for you
to have no fresh relations, either with foreigners or others, until your
work is done,--in which, my dear child, may God bless you!”

“I pray to him with all my might,” Vittoria said in reply.

After a consultation with Agostino, Ugo Corte and Marco and Giulio bade
their adieux to her. The task of keeping Luigi from their clutches was
difficult; but Agostino helped her in that also. To assure them, after
his fashion, of the harmlessness of Luigi, he seconded him in a contest
of wit against Beppo, and the little fellow, now that he had shaken off
his fears, displayed a quickness of retort and a liveliness “unknown
to professional spies and impossible to the race,” said Agostino; “so
absolutely is the mind of man blunted by Austrian gold. We know that
for a fact. Beppo is no match for him. Beppo is sententious; ponderously
illustrative; he can't turn; he is long-winded; he, I am afraid, my
Carlo, studies the journals. He has got your journalistic style, wherein
words of six syllables form the relief to words of eight, and hardly one
dares to stand by itself. They are like huge boulders across a brook.
The meaning, do you, see, would run of itself, but you give us these
impedimenting big stones to help us over it, while we profess to
understand you by implication. For my part, I own, that to me, your
parliamentary, illegitimate academic, modern crocodile phraseology,
which is formidable in the jaws, impenetrable on the back, can't
circumvent a corner, and is enabled to enter a common understanding
solely by having a special highway prepared for it,--in short, the
writing in your journals is too much for me. Beppo here is an example
that the style is useless for controversy. This Luigi baffles him at
every step.”

“Some,” rejoined Carlo, “say that Beppo has had the virtue to make you
his study.”

Agostino threw himself on his back and closed his eyes. “That, then, is
more than you have done, signor Tuquoque. Look on the Bernina yonder,
and fancy you behold a rout of phantom Goths; a sleepy rout, new risen,
with the blood of old battles on their shroud-shirts, and a North-east
wind blowing them upon our fat land. Or take a turn at the other
side toward Orta, and look out for another invasion, by no means so
picturesque, but preferable. Tourists! Do you hear them?”

Carlo Ammiani had descried the advanced troop of a procession of
gravely-heated climbers ladies upon donkeys, and pedestrian guards
stalking beside them, with courier, and lacqueys, and baskets of
provisions, all bearing the stamp of pilgrims from the great Western
Island.




CHAPTER VI

A mountain ascended by these children of the forcible Isle, is a
mountain to be captured, and colonized, and absolutely occupied for
a term; so that Vittoria soon found herself and her small body of
adherents observed, and even exclaimed against, as a sort of intruding
aborigines, whose presence entirely dispelled the sense of romantic
dominion which a mighty eminence should give, and which Britons expect
when they have expended a portion of their energies. The exclamations
were not complimentary; nevertheless, Vittoria listened with pleased
ears, as one listens by a brookside near an old home, hearing a music
of memory rather than common words. They talked of heat, of appetite, of
chill, of thirst, of the splendour of the prospect, of the anticipations
of good hotel accommodation below, of the sadness superinduced by the
reflection that in these days people were found everywhere, and poetry
was thwarted; again of heat, again of thirst, of beauty, and of chill.
There was the enunciation of matronly advice; there was the outcry
of girlish insubordination; there were sighings for English ale, and
namings of the visible ranges of peaks, and indicatings of geographical
fingers to show where Switzerland and Piedmont met, and Austria held her
grasp on Lombardy; and “to this point we go to-night; yonder to-morrow;
farther the next day,” was uttered, soberly or with excitement, as
befitted the age of the speaker.

Among these tourists there was one very fair English lady, with long
auburn curls of the traditionally English pattern, and the science of
Paris displayed in her bonnet and dress; which, if not as graceful
as severe admirers of the antique in statuary or of the mediaeval in
drapery demand, pleads prettily to be thought so, and commonly succeeds
in its object, when assisted by an artistic feminine manner. Vittoria
heard her answer to the name of Mrs. Sedley. She had once known her as
a Miss Adela Pole. Amidst the cluster of assiduous gentlemen surrounding
this lady it was difficult for Vittoria's stolen glances to discern her
husband; and the moment she did discern him she became as indifferent
to him as was his young wife, by every manifestation of her sentiments.
Mrs. Sedley informed her lord that it was not expected of him to care,
or to pretend to care, for such scenes as the Motterone exhibited; and
having dismissed him to the shade of an umbrella near the provision
baskets, she took her station within a few steps of Vittoria, and
allowed her attendant gentlemen to talk while she remained plunged in a
meditative rapture at the prospect. The talk indicated a settled scheme
for certain members of the party to reach Milan from the Como road.
Mrs. Sedley was asked if she expected her brother to join her here or in
Milan.

“Here, if a man's promises mean anything,” she replied languidly.

She was told that some one waved a handkerchief to them from below.

“Is he alone?” she said; and directing an operaglass upon the slope of
the mountain, pursued, as in a dreamy disregard of circumstances: “That
is Captain Gambier. My brother Wilfrid has not kept his appointment.
Perhaps he could not get leave from the General; perhaps he is married;
he is engaged to an Austrian Countess, I have heard. Captain Gambier did
me the favour to go round to a place called Stresa to meet him. He has
undertaken the journey for nothing. It is the way with all journeys
though this” (the lady had softly reverted to her rapture) “this is too
exquisite! Nature at least does not deceive.”

Vittoria listened to a bubbling of meaningless chatter, until Captain
Gambier had joined Mrs. Sedley; and at him, for she had known him
likewise, she could not forbear looking up. He was speaking to Mrs.
Sedley, but caught the look, and bent his head for a clearer view of
the features under the broad straw hat. Mrs. Sedley commanded him
imperiously to say on.

“Have you no letter from Wilfrid? Has the mountain tired you? Has
Wilfrid failed to send his sister one word? Surely Mr. Pericles will
have made known our exact route to him? And his uncle, General Pierson,
could--I am certain he did--exert his influence to procure him leave for
a single week to meet the dearest member of his family.”

Captain Gambier gathered his wits to give serviceable response to the
kindled lady, and letting his eyes fall from time to time on the broad
straw hat, made answer--“Lieutenant Pierson, or, in other words, Wilfrid
Pole--”

The lady stamped her foot and flushed.

“You know, Augustus, I detest that name.”

“Pardon me a thousandfold. I had forgotten.”

“What has happened to you?”

Captain Gambier accused the heat.

“I found a letter from Wilfrid at the hotel. He is apparently kept on
constant service between Milan, and Verona, and Venice. His quarters are
at Verona. He informs me that he is to be married in the Spring; that
is, if all continues quiet; married in the Spring. He seems to fancy
that there may be disturbances; not of a serious kind, of course. He
will meet you in Milan. He has never been permitted to remain at Milan
longer than a couple of days at a stretch. Pericles has told him that
she is in Florence. Pericles has told me that Miss Belloni has removed
to Florence.”

“Say it a third time,” the lady indulgently remarked.

“I do not believe that she has gone.”

“I dare say not.”

“She has changed her name, you know.”

“Oh, dear, yes; she has done something fantastic, naturally! For my
part, I should have thought her own good enough.”

“Emilia Alessandra Belloni is good enough, certainly,” said Captain
Gambier.

The shading straw rim had shaken once during the colloquy. It was now a
fixed defence.

“What is her new name?” Mrs. Sedley inquired.

“That I cannot tell. Wilfrid merely mentions that he has not seen her.”

“I,” said Mrs. Sedley, “when I reach Milan, shall not trust to Mr.
Pericles, but shall write to the Conservatorio; for if she is going
to be a great cantatrice, really, it will be agreeable to renew
acquaintance with her. Nor will it do any mischief to Wilfrid, now that
he is engaged. Are you very deeply attached to straw hats? They are
sweet in a landscape.”

Mrs. Sedley threw him a challenge from her blue eyes; but his reply to
it was that of an unskilled youth, who reads a lady by the letters of
her speech:--“One minute. I will be with you instantly. I want to have a
look down on the lake. I suppose this is one of the most splendid views
in Italy. Half a minute!”

Captain Gambier smiled brilliantly; and the lady, perceiving that
polished shield, checked the shot of indignation on her astonished
features, and laid it by. But the astonishment lingered there, like the
lines of a slackened bow. She beheld her ideal of an English gentleman
place himself before these recumbent foreign people, and turn to talk
across them, with a pertinacious pursuit of the face under the bent
straw hat. Nor was it singular to her that one of them at last should
rise and protest against the continuation of the impertinence.

Carlo Ammiani, in fact, had opened matters with a scrupulously-courteous
bow.

“Monsieur is perhaps unaware that he obscures the outlook?”

“Totally, monsieur,” said Captain Gambier, and stood fast.

“Will monsieur do me the favour to take three steps either to the right
or to the left?”

“Pardon, monsieur, but the request is put almost in the form of an
order.”

“Simply if it should prove inefficacious in the form of a request.”

“What, may I ask, monsieur, is your immediate object?”

“To entreat you to behave with civility.”

“I am at a loss, monsieur, to perceive any offence.”

“Permit me to say, it is lamentable you do not know when you insult a
lady.”

“I have insulted a lady?” Captain Gambier looked profoundly incredulous.
“Oh! then you will not take exception to my assuming the privilege to
apologize to her in person?”

Ammiani arrested him as he was about to pass.

“Stay, monsieur; you determine to be impudent, I perceive; you shall not
be obtrusive.”

Vittoria had tremblingly taken old Agostino's hand, and had risen to her
feet. Still keeping her face hidden, she walked down the slope, followed
at an interval by her servant, and curiously watched by the English
officer, who said to himself, “Well, I suppose I was mistaken,” and
consequently discovered that he was in a hobble.

A short duologue in their best stilted French ensued between him and
Ammiani. It was pitched too high in a foreign tongue for Captain Gambier
to descend from it, as he would fain have done, to ask the lady's name.
They exchanged cards and formal salutes, and parted.

The dignified altercation had been witnessed by the main body of the
tourists. Captain Gambier told them that he had merely interchanged
amicable commonplaces with the Frenchman,--“or Italian,” he added
carelessly, reading the card in his hand. “I thought she might be
somebody whom we knew,” he said to Mrs. Sedley.

“Not the shadow of a likeness to her,” the lady returned.

She had another opinion when later a scrap of paper bearing one
pencilled line on it was handed round. A damsel of the party had picked
it up near the spot where, as she remarked, “the foreigners had been
sitting.” It said:--

     “Let none who look for safety go to Milan.”




CHAPTER VII

A week following the day of meetings on the Motterone, Luigi the spy was
in Milan, making his way across the Piazza de' Mercanti. He entered a
narrow court, one of those which were anciently built upon the Oriental
principle of giving shade at the small cost of excluding common air. It
was dusky noon there through the hours of light, and thrice night when
darkness fell. The atmosphere, during the sun's short passage overhead,
hung with a glittering heaviness, like the twinkling iron-dust in a
subterranean smithy. On the lower window of one of the houses there
was a board, telling men that Barto Rizzo made and mended shoes, and
requesting people who wished to see him to make much noise at the door,
for he was hard of hearing. It speedily became known in the court that a
visitor desired to see Barto Rizzo. The noise produced by Luigi was
like that of a fanatical beater of the tomtom; he knocked and banged
and danced against the door, crying out for his passing amusement an
adaptation of a popular ballad:--“Oh, Barto, Barto! my boot is sadly
worn: The toe is seen that should be veiled from sight. The toe that
should be veiled like an Eastern maid: like a sultan's daughter:
Shocking! shocking! One of a company of ten that were living a secluded
life in chaste privacy! Oh, Barto, Barto! must I charge it to thy
despicable leather or to my incessant pilgrimages? One fair toe! I fear
presently the corruption of the remaining nine: Then, alas! what do I go
on? How shall I come to a perfumed end, who walk on ten indecent toes?
Well may the delicate gentlemen sneer at me and scorn me: As for the
angelic Lady who deigns to look so low, I may say of her that her
graciousness clothes what she looks at: To her the foot, the leg, the
back: To her the very soul is bared: But she is a rarity upon earth. Oh,
Barto, Barto, she is rarest in Milan! I might run a day's length and not
find her. If, O Barto, as my boot hints to me, I am about to be stripped
of my last covering, I must hurry to the inconvenient little chamber
of my mother, who cannot refuse to acknowledge me as of this pattern:
Barto, O shoemaker! thou son of artifice and right-hand-man of
necessity, preserve me in the fashion of the time: Cobble me neatly: A
dozen wax threads and I am remade:--Excellent! I thank you! Now I can
plant my foot bravely: Oh, Barto, my shoemaker! between ourselves, it
is unpleasant in these refined days to be likened at all to that
preposterous Adam!”

The omission of the apostrophes to Barto left it one of the ironical,
veiled Republican, semi-socialistic ballads of the time, which were sung
about the streets for the sharpness and pith of the couplets, and not
from a perception of the double edge down the length of them.

As Luigi was coming to the terminating line, the door opened. A very
handsome sullen young woman, of the dark, thick-browed Lombard type,
asked what was wanted; at the same time the deep voice of a man;
conjecturally rising from a lower floor, called, and a lock was rattled.
The woman told Luigi to enter. He sent a glance behind him; he had
evidently been drained of his sprightliness in a second; he moved in
with the slackness of limb of a gibbeted figure. The door shut; the
woman led him downstairs. He could not have danced or sung a song now
for great pay. The smell of mouldiness became so depressing to him that
the smell of leather struck his nostrils refreshingly. He thought: “Oh,
Virgin! it's dark enough to make one believe in every single thing they
tell us about the saints.” Up in the light of day Luigi had a turn for
careless thinking on these holy subjects.

Barto Rizzo stood before him in a square of cellarage that was furnished
with implements of his craft, too dark for a clear discernment of
features.

“So, here you are!” was the greeting Luigi received.

It was a tremendous voice, that seemed to issue from a vast cavity.
“Lead the gentleman to my sitting-room,” said Barto. Luigi felt the wind
of a handkerchief, and guessed that his eyes were about to be bandaged
by the woman behind him. He petitioned to be spared it, on the plea,
firstly, that it expressed want of confidence; secondly, that it took
him in the stomach. The handkerchief was tight across his eyes while
he was speaking. His hand was touched by the woman, and he commenced
timidly an ascent of stairs. It continued so that he would have sworn
he was a shorter time going up the Motterone; then down, and along a
passage; lower down, deep into corpse-climate; up again, up another
enormous mountain; and once more down, as among rats and beetles, and
down, as among faceless horrors, and down, where all things seemed
prostrate and with a taste of brass. It was the poor fellow's nervous
imagination, preternaturally excited. When the handkerchief was caught
away, his jaw was shuddering, his eyes were sickly; he looked as if
impaled on the prongs of fright. It required just half a minute to
reanimate this mercurial creature, when he found himself under the
light of two lamps, and Barto Rizzo fronting him, in a place so like the
square of cellarage which he had been led to with unbandaged eyes, that
it relieved his dread by touching his humour. He cried, “Have I made the
journey of the Signor Capofinale, who visited the other end of the world
by standing on his head?”

Barto Rizzo rolled out a burly laugh.

“Sit,” he said. “You're a poor sweating body, and must needs have a dry
tongue. Will you drink?”

“Dry!” quoth Luigi. “Holy San Carlo is a mash in a wine-press compared
with me.”

Barto Rizzo handed him a liquor, which he drank, and after gave thanks
to Providence. Barto raised his hand.

“We're too low down here for that kind of machinery,” he said. “They say
that Providence is on the side of the Austrians. Now then, what have you
to communicate to me? This time I let you come to my house trust at all,
trust entirely. I think that's the proverb. You are admitted: speak like
a guest.”

Luigi's preference happened to be for categorical interrogations. Never
having an idea of spontaneously telling the whole truth, the sense that
he was undertaking a narrative gave him such emotions as a bad swimmer
upon deep seas may have; while, on the other hand, his being subjected
to a series of questions seemed at least to leave him with one leg
on shore, for then he could lie discreetly, and according to the
finger-posts, and only when necessary, and he could recover himself if
he made a false step. His ingenious mind reasoned these images out to
his own satisfaction. He requested, therefore, that his host would let
him hear what he desired to know.

Barto Rizzo's forefinger was pressed from an angle into one temple. His
head inclined to meet it: so that it was like the support to a broad
blunt pillar. The cropped head was flat as an owl's; the chest of
immense breadth; the bulgy knees and big hands were those of a dwarf
athlete. Strong colour, lying full on him from the neck to the forehead,
made the big veins purple and the eyes fierier than the movements of his
mind would have indicated. He was simply studying the character of his
man. Luigi feared him; he was troubled chiefly because he was unaware of
what Barto Rizzo wanted to know, and could not consequently tell what
to bring to the market. The simplicity of the questions put to him was
bewildering: he fell into the trap. Barto's eyes began to get terribly
oblique. Jingling money in his pocket, he said:--“You saw Colonel Corte
on the Motterone: you saw the Signor Agostino Balderini: good men, both!
Also young Count Ammiani: I served his father, the General, and jogged
the lad on my knee. You saw the Signorina Vittoria. The English people
came, and you heard them talk, but did not understand. You came home and
told all this to the Signor Antonio, your employer number one. You have
told the same to me, your employer number two. There's your pay.”

Barto summed up thus the information he had received, and handed Luigi
six gold pieces. The latter, springing with boyish thankfulness and
pride at the easy earning of them, threw in a few additional facts, as,
that he had been taken for a spy by the conspirators, and had heard one
of the Englishmen mention the Signorina Vittoria's English name.
Barto Rizzo lifted his eyebrows queerly. “We'll go through another
interrogatory in an hour,” he said; “stop here till I return.”

Luigi was always too full of his own cunning to suspect the same in
another, until he was left alone to reflect on a scene; when it became
overwhelmingly transparent. “But, what could I say more than I did say?”
 he asked himself, as he stared at the one lamp Barto had left. Finding
the door unfastened, he took the lamp and lighted himself out, and along
a cavernous passage ending in a blank wall, against which his heart
knocked and fell, for his sensation was immediately the terror of
imprisonment and helplessness. Mad with alarm, he tried every spot for
an aperture. Then he sat down on his haunches; he remembered hearing
word of Barto Rizzo's rack:--certain methods peculiar to Barto Rizzo,
by which he screwed matters out of his agents, and terrified them into
fidelity. His personal dealings with Barto were of recent date; but
Luigi knew him by repute: he knew that the shoemaking business was
a mask. Barto had been a soldier, a schoolmaster: twice an exile; a
conspirator since the day when the Austrians had the two fine Apples
of Pomona, Lombardy and Venice, given them as fruits of peace. Luigi
remembered how he had snapped his fingers at the name of Barto Rizzo.
There was no despising him now. He could only arrive at a peaceful
contemplation of Barto Rizzo's character by determining to tell all,
and (since that seemed little) more than he knew. He got back to
the leather-smelling chamber, which was either the same or purposely
rendered exactly similar to the one he had first been led to.

At the end of a leaden hour Barto Rizzo returned.

“Now, to recommence,” he said. “Drink before you speak, if your tongue
is dry.”

Luigi thrust aside the mention of liquor. It seemed to him that by doing
so he propitiated that ill-conceived divinity called Virtue, who lived
in the open air, and desired men to drink water. Barto Rizzo evidently
understood the kind of man he was schooling to his service.

“Did that Austrian officer, who is an Englishman, acquainted with the
Signor Antonio-Pericles, meet the lady, his sister, on the Motterone?”

Luigi answered promptly, “Yes.”

“Did the Signorina Vittoria speak to the lady?”

“No.”

“Not a word?”

“No.”

“Not one communication to her?”

“No: she sat under her straw hat.”

“She concealed her face?”

“She sat like a naughty angry girl.”

“Did she speak to the officer?”

“Not she!”

“Did she see him?”

“Of course she did! As if a woman's eyes couldn't see through
straw-plait!”

Barto paused, calculatingly, eye on victim.

“The Signorina Vittoria,” he resumed, “has engaged to sing on the night
of the Fifteenth; has she?”

A twitching of Luigi's muscles showed that he apprehended a necessary
straining of his invention on another tack.

“On the night of the Fifteenth, Signor Barto Rizzo? That's the night of
her first appearance. Oh, yes!”

“To sing a particular song?”

“Lots of them! ay-aie!”

Barto took him by the shoulder and pressed him into his seat till he
howled, saying, “Now, there's a slate and a pencil. Expect me at the
end of two hours, this time. Next time it will be four: then eight,
then sixteen. Find out how many hours that will be at the sixteenth
examination.”

Luigi flew at the torturer and stuck at the length of his straightened
arm, where he wriggled, refusing to listen to the explanation of Barto's
system; which was that, in cases where every fresh examination taught
him more, they were continued, after regularly-lengthening intervals,
that might extend from the sowing of seed to the ripening of grain.
“When all's delivered,” said Barto, “then we begin to correct
discrepancies. I expect,” he added, “you and I will have done before a
week's out.”

“A week!” Luigi shouted. “Here's my stomach already leaping like a fish
at the smell of this hole. You brute bear! it's a smell of bones.
It turns my inside with a spoon. May the devil seize you when you're
sleeping! You shan't go: I'll tell you everything--everything. I
can't tell you anything more than I have told you. She gave me a
cigarette--there! Now you know:--gave me a cigarette; a cigarette. I
smoked it--there! Your faithful servant!”

“She gave you a cigarette, and you smoked it; ha!” said Barto Rizzo, who
appeared to see something to weigh even in that small fact. “The English
lady gave you the cigarette?”

Luigi nodded: “Yes;” pertinacious in deception. “Yes,” he repeated; “the
English lady. That was the person. What's the use of your skewering me
with your eyes!”

“I perceive that you have never travelled, my Luigi,” said Barto. “I am
afraid we shall not part so early as I had supposed. I double the dose,
and return to you in four hours' time.”

Luigi threw himself flat on the ground, shrieking that he was ready
to tell everything--anything. Not even the apparent desperation of his
circumstances could teach him that a promise to tell the truth was a
more direct way of speaking. Indeed, the hitting of the truth would
have seemed to him a sort of artful archery, the burden of which should
devolve upon the questioner, whom he supplied with the relation of
“everything and anything.”

All through a night Luigi's lesson continued. In the morning he was
still breaking out in small and purposeless lies; but Barto Rizzo
had accomplished his two objects: that of squeezing him, and that
of subjecting his imagination. Luigi confessed (owing to a singular
recovery of his memory) the gift of the cigarette as coming from the
Signorina Vittoria. What did it matter if she did give him a cigarette?

“You adore her for it?” said Barto.

“May the Virgin sweep the floor of heaven into her lap!” interjected
Luigi. “She is a good patriot.”

“Are you one?” Barto asked.

“Certainly I am.”

“Then I shall have to suspect you, for the good of your country.”

Luigi could not see the deduction. He was incapable of guessing that it
might apply forcibly to Vittoria, who had undertaken a grave, perilous,
and imminent work. Nothing but the spontaneous desire to elude the
pursuit of a questioner had at first instigated his baffling of Barto
Rizzo, until, fearing the dark square man himself, he feared him dimly
for Vittoria's sake; he could not have said why. She was a good patriot:
wherefore the reason for wishing to know more of her? Barto Rizzo had
compelled him at last to furnish a narrative of the events of that day
on the Motterone, and, finding himself at sea, Luigi struck out boldly
and swam as well as he could. Barto disentangled one succinct thread of
incidents: Vittoria had been commissioned by the Chief to sing on the
night of the Fifteenth; she had subsequently, without speaking to any of
the English party, or revealing her features “keeping them beautifully
hidden,” Luigi said, with unaccountable enthusiasm--written a warning to
them that they were to avoid Milan. The paper on which the warning had
been written was found by the English when he was the only Italian on
the height, lying thereto observe and note things in the service of
Barto Rizzo. The writing was English, but when one of the English
ladies--“who wore her hair like a planed shred of wood; like a torn
vine; like a kite with two tails; like Luxury at the Banquet, ready
to tumble over marble shoulders” (an illustration drawn probably from
Luigi's study of some allegorical picture,--he was at a loss to describe
the foreign female head-dress)--when this lady had read the writing,
she exclaimed that it was the hand of “her Emilia!” and soon after she
addressed Luigi in English, then in French, then in “barricade Italian”
 (by which phrase Luigi meant that the Italian words were there, but
did not present their proper smooth footing for his understanding), and
strove to obtain information from him concerning the signorina, and
also concerning the chances that Milan would be an agitated city. Luigi
assured her that Milan was the peacefullest of cities--a pure babe. He
admitted his acquaintance with the Signorina Vittoria Campa, and denied
her being “any longer” the Emilia Alessandra Belloni of the English
lady. The latter had partly retained him in her service, having
given him directions to call at her hotel in Milan, and help her to
communicate with her old friend. “I present myself to her to-morrow,
Friday,” said Luigi.

“That's to-day,” said Barto.

Luigi clapped his hand to his cheek, crying wofully, “You've drawn,
beastly gaoler! a night out of my life like an old jaw-tooth.”

“There's day two or three fathoms above us,” said Barto; “and hot coffee
is coming down.”

“I believe I've been stewing in a pot while the moon looked so cool.”
 Luigi groaned, and touched up along the sleeves of his arms: that which
he fancied he instantaneously felt.

The coffee was brought by the heavy-browed young woman. Before she
quitted the place Barto desired her to cast her eyes on Luigi, and say
whether she thought she should know him again. She scarcely glanced, and
gave answer with a shrug of the shoulders as she retired. Luigi at the
time was drinking. He rose; he was about to speak, but yawned instead.
The woman's carelessly-dropped upper eyelids seemed to him to be reading
him through a dozen of his contortions and disguises, and checked the
idea of liberty which he associated with getting to the daylight.

“But it is worth the money!” shouted Barto Rizzo, with a splendid
divination of his thought. “You skulker! are you not paid and fattened
to do business which you've only to remember, and it'll honey your legs
in purgatory? You're the shooting-dog of that Greek, and you nose
about the bushes for his birds, and who cares if any fellow, just for
exercise, shoots a dagger a yard from his wrist and sticks you in the
back? You serve me, and there's pay for you; brothers, doctors, nurses,
friends,--a tight blanket if you fall from a housetop! and masses for
your soul when your hour strikes. The treacherous cur lies rotting in a
ditch! Do you conceive that when I employ you I am in your power? Your
intelligence will open gradually. Do you know that here in this house
I can conceal fifty men, and leave the door open to the Croats to find
them? I tell you now--you are free; go forth. You go alone; no one
touches you; ten years hence a skeleton is found with an English letter
on its ribs--”

“Oh, stop! signor Barto, and be a blessed man,” interposed Luigi,
doubling and wriggling in a posture that appeared as if he were shaking
negatives from the elbows of his crossed arms. “Stop. How did you know
of a letter? I forgot--I have seen the English lady at her hotel. I was
carrying the signorina's answer, when I thought 'Barto Rizzo calls me,'
and I came like a lamb. And what does it matter? She is a good patriot;
you are a good patriot; here it is. Consider my reputation, do; and be
careful with the wax.”

Barto drew a long breath. The mention of the English letter had been a
shot in the dark. The result corroborated his devotional belief in the
unerringness of his own powerful intuition. He had guessed the case, or
hardly even guessed it--merely stated it, to horrify Luigi. The letter
was placed in his hands, and he sat as strongly thrilled by emotion,
under the mask of his hard face, as a lover hearing music. “I read
English,” he remarked.

After he had drawn the seal three or four times slowly over the lamp,
the green wax bubbled and unsnapped. Vittoria had written the following
lines in reply to her old English friend:--

   “Forgive me, and do not ask to see me until we have passed the
   fifteenth of the month. You will see me that night at La Scala. I
   wish to embrace you, but I am miserable to think of your being in
   Milan. I cannot yet tell you where my residence is. I have not met
   your brother. If he writes to me it will make me happy, but I
   refuse to see him. I will explain to him why. Let him not try to
   see me. Let him send by this messenger. I hope he will contrive to
   be out of Milan all this month. Pray let me influence you to go for
   a time. I write coldly; I am tired, and forget my English. I do
   not forget my friends. I have you close against my heart. If it
   were prudent, and it involved me alone, I would come to you without
   a moment's loss of time. Do know that I am not changed, and am your
   affectionate

                    “Emilia.”

When Barto Rizzo had finished reading, he went from the chamber and blew
his voice into what Luigi supposed to be a hollow tube.

“This letter,” he said, coming back, “is a repetition of the Signorina
Vittoria's warning to her friends on the Motterone. The English lady's
brother, who is in the Austrian service, was there, you say?”

Luigi considered that, having lately been believed in, he could not
afford to look untruthful, and replied with a sprightly “Assuredly.”

“He was there, and he read the writing on the paper?”

“Assuredly: right out loud, between puff-puff of his cigar.”

“His name is Lieutenant Pierson. Did not Antonio-Pericles tell you his
name? He will write to her: you will be the bearer of his letter to the
signorina. I must see her reply. She is a good patriot; so am I; so are
you. Good patriots must be prudent. I tell you, I must see her reply
to this Lieutenant Pierson.” Barto stuck his thumb and finger astride
Luigi's shoulder and began rocking him gently, with a horrible
meditative expression. “You will have to accomplish this, my Luigi. All
fair excuses will be made, if you fail generally. This you must do. Keep
upright while I am speaking to you! The excuses will be made; but I, not
you, must make them: bear that in mind. Is there any person whom you, my
Luigi, like best in the world?”

It was a winning question, and though Luigi was not the dupe of its
insinuating gentleness, he answered, “The little girl who carries
flowers every morning to the caffe La Scala.”

“Ah! the little girl who carries flowers every morning to the caffe
La Scala. Now, my Luigi, you may fail me, and I may pardon you. Listen
attentively: if you are false; if you are guilty of one piece of
treachery:--do you see? You can't help slipping, but you can help
jumping. Restrain yourself from jumping, that's all. If you are guilty
of treachery, hurry at once, straight off, to the little girl who
carries flowers every morning to the caffe La Scala. Go to her, take
her by the two cheeks, kiss her, say to her 'addio, addio,' for, by the
thunder of heaven! you will never see her more.”

Luigi was rocked forward and back, while Barto spoke in level tones,
till the voice dropped into its vast hollow, when Barto held him fast a
moment, and hurled him away by the simple lifting of his hand.

The woman appeared and bound Luigi's eyes. Barto did not utter another
word. On his journey back to daylight, Luigi comforted himself by
muttering oaths that he would never again enter into this trap. As
soon as his eyes were unbandaged, he laughed, and sang, and tossed a
compliment from his finger-tips to the savage-browed beauty; pretended
that he had got an armful, and that his heart was touched by the
ecstasy; and sang again: “Oh, Barto, Barto! my boot is sadly worn. The
toe is seen,” etc., half-way down the stanzas. Without his knowing it,
and before he had quitted the court, he had sunk into songless gloom,
brooding on the scenes of the night. However free he might be in body,
his imagination was captive to Barto Rizzo. He was no luckier than a
bird, for whom the cage is open that it may feel the more keenly with
its little taste of liberty that it is tied by the leg.




CHAPTER VIII

The importance of the matters extracted from Luigi does not lie on the
surface; it will have to be seen through Barto Rizzo's mind. This man
regarded himself as the mainspring of the conspiracy; specially its
guardian, its wakeful Argus. He had conspired sleeplessly for thirty
years; so long, that having no ideal reserve in his nature, conspiracy
had become his professional occupation,--the wheel which it was his
business to roll. He was above jealousy; he was above vanity. No one
outstripping him cast a bad colour on him; nor did he object to bow to
another as his superior. But he was prepared to suspect every one of
insincerity and of faithlessness; and, being the master of the machinery
of the plots, he was ready, upon a whispered justification, to
despise the orders of his leader, and act by his own light in blunt
disobedience. For it was his belief that while others speculated he knew
all. He knew where the plots had failed; he knew the man who had bent
and doubled. In the patriotic cause, perfect arrangements are
crowned with perfect success, unless there is an imperfection of the
instruments; for the cause is blessed by all superior agencies. Such was
his governing idea. His arrangements had always been perfect; hence the
deduction was a denunciation of some one particular person. He pointed
out the traitor here, the traitor there; and in one or two cases he
did so with a mildness that made those fret at their beards vaguely
who understood his character. Barto Rizzo was, it was said, born in
a village near Forli, in the dominions of the Pope; according to the
rumour, he was the child of a veiled woman and a cowled paternity. If
not an offender against Government, he was at least a wanderer early in
life. None could accuse him of personal ambition. He boasted that he
had served as a common soldier with the Italian contingent furnished
by Eugene to the Moscow campaign; he showed scars of old wounds: brown
spots, and blue spots, and twisted twine of white skin, dotting the
wrist, the neck, the calf, the ankle, and looking up from them, he
slapped them proudly. Nor had he personal animosities of any kind. One
sharp scar, which he called his shoulder knot, he owed to the knife of
a friend, by name Sarpo, who had things ready to betray him, and struck
him, in anticipation of that tremendous moment of surprise and wrath
when the awakened victim frequently is nerved with devil's strength;
but, striking, like a novice, on the bone, the stilet stuck there; and
Barto coolly got him to point the outlet of escape, and walked off,
carrying the blade where the terrified assassin had planted it. This
Sarpo had become a tradesman in Milan--a bookseller and small printer;
and he was unmolested. Barto said of him, that he was as bad as a few
odd persons thought himself to be, and had in him the making of a great
traitor; but, that as Sarpo hated him and had sought to be rid of him
for private reasons only, it was a pity to waste on such a fellow steel
that should serve the Cause. “While I live,” said Barto, “my enemies
have a tolerably active conscience.”

The absence of personal animosity in him was not due to magnanimity. He
doubted the patriotism of all booksellers. He had been twice betrayed
by women. He never attempted to be revenged on them; but he doubted
the patriotism of all women. “Use them; keep eye on them,” he said.
In Venice he had conspired when he was living there as the clerk of
a notary; in Bologna subsequently while earning his bread as a petty
schoolmaster. His evasions, both of Papal sbirri and the Austrian
polizia, furnished instances of astonishing audacity that made his name
a byword for mastery in the hour of peril. His residence in Milan now,
after seven years of exile in England and Switzerland, was an act of
pointed defiance, incomprehensible to his own party, and only to be
explained by the prevalent belief that the authorities feared to provoke
a collision with the people by laying hands on him. They had only once
made a visitation to his house, and appeared to be satisfied at not
finding him. At that period Austria was simulating benevolence in her
Lombardic provinces, with the half degree of persuasive earnestness
which makes a Government lax in its vigilance, and leaves it simply
open to the charge of effeteness. There were contradictory rumours as
to whether his house had ever been visited by the polizia; but it was a
legible fact that his name was on the window, and it was understood that
he was not without elusive contrivances in the event of the authorities
declaring war against him.

Of the nature of these contrivances Luigi had just learnt something. He
had heard Barto Rizzo called 'The Miner' and 'The Great Cat,' and he now
comprehended a little of the quality of his employer. He had entered
a very different service from that of the Signor Antonio-Pericles, who
paid him for nothing more than to keep eye on Vittoria, and recount her
goings in and out; for what absolute object he was unaware, but that it
was not for a political one he was certain. “Cursed be the day when the
lust of gold made me open my hand to Barto Rizzo!” he thought; and could
only reflect that life is short and gold is sweet, and that he was in
the claws of the Great Cat. He had met Barto in a wine-shop. He cursed
the habit which led him to call at that shop; the thirst which tempted
him to drink: the ear which had been seduced to listen. Yet as all his
expenses had been paid in advance, and his reward at the instant of
his application for it; and as the signorina and Barto were both good
patriots, and he, Luigi, was a good patriot, what harm could be done to
her? Both she and Barto had stamped their different impressions on
his waxen nature. He reconciled his service to them separately by the
exclamation that they were both good patriots.

The plot for the rising in Milan city was two months old. It comprised
some of the nobles of the city, and enjoyed the good wishes of the
greater part of them, whose payment of fifty to sixty per cent to the
Government on the revenue of their estates was sufficient reason for
a desire to change masters, positively though they might detest
Republicanism, and dread the shadow of anarchy. These looked hopefully
to Charles Albert. Their motive was to rise, or to countenance a rising,
and summon the ambitious Sardinian monarch with such assurances of
devotion, that a Piedmontese army would be at the gates when the
banner of Austria was in the dust. Among the most active members of the
prospectively insurgent aristocracy of Milan was Count Medole, a young
nobleman of vast wealth and possessed of a reliance on his powers
of mind that induced him to take a prominent part in the opening
deliberations, and speedily necessitated his hire of the friendly
offices of one who could supply him with facts, with suggestions, with
counsel, with fortitude, with everything to strengthen his pretensions
to the leadership, excepting money. He discovered his man in Barto
Rizzo, who quitted the ranks of the republican section to serve him, and
wield a tool for his own party. By the help of Agostino Balderini, Carlo
Ammiani, and others, the aristocratic and the republican sections of
the conspiracy were brought near enough together to permit of a common
action between them, though the maintaining of such harmony demanded an
extreme and tireless delicacy of management. The presence of the Chief,
whom we have seen on the Motterone, was claimed by other cities of
Italy. Unto him solely did Barto Rizzo yield thorough adhesion. He being
absent from Milan, Barto undertook to represent him and carry out his
views. How far he was entitled to do so may be guessed when it is stated
that, on the ground of his general contempt for women, he objected to
the proposition that Vittoria should give the signal. The proposition
was Agostino's. Count Medole, Barto, and Agostino discussed it secretly:
Barto held resolutely against it, until Agostino thrust a sly-handed
letter into his fingers and let him know that previous to any
consultation on the subject he had gained the consent of his Chief.
Barto then fell silent. He despatched his new spy, Luigi, to the
Motterone, more for the purpose of giving him a schooling on the
expedition, and on his return from it, and so getting hand and brain
and soul service out of him. He expected no such a report of Vittoria's
indiscretion as Luigi had spiced with his one foolish lie. That she
should tell the relatives of an Austrian officer that Milan was soon to
be a dangerous place for them;--and that she should write it on paper
and leave it for the officer to read,--left her, according to Barto's
reading of her, open to the alternative charges of imbecility or of
treachery. Her letter to the English lady, the Austrian officer's
sister, was an exaggeration of the offence, but lent it more the look
of heedless folly. The point was to obtain sight of her letter to the
Austrian officer himself. Barto was baffled during a course of anxious
days that led closely up to the fifteenth. She had written no letter.
Lieutenant Pierson, the officer in question, had ridden into the city
once from Verona, and had called upon Antonio-Pericles to extract her
address from him; the Greek had denied that she was in Milan. Luigi
could tell no more. He described the officer's personal appearance,
by saying that he was a recognizable Englishman in Austrian dragoon
uniform;--white tunic, white helmet, brown moustache;--ay! and eh! and
oh! and ah! coming frequently from his mouth; that he stood square while
speaking, and seemed to like his own smile; an extraordinary touch of
portraiture, or else a scoff at insular self-satisfaction; at any rate,
it commended itself to the memory. Barto dismissed him, telling him to
be daily in attendance on the English lady.

Barto Rizzo's respect for the Chief was at war with his intense
conviction that a blow should be struck at Vittoria even upon the narrow
information which he possessed. Twice betrayed, his dreams and haunting
thoughts cried “Shall a woman betray you thrice?” In his imagination
he stood identified with Italy: the betrayal of one meant that of
both. Falling into a deep reflection, Barto counted over his hours of
conspiracy: he counted the Chief's; comparing the two sets of figures he
discovered, that as he had suspected, he was the elder in the patriotic
work therefore, if he bowed his head to the Chief, it was a voluntary
act, a form of respect, and not the surrendering of his judgement. He
was on the spot: the Chief was absent. Barto reasoned that the Chief
could have had no experience of women, seeing that he was ready to trust
in them. “Do I trust to my pigeon, my sling-stone?” he said jovially to
the thickbrowed, splendidly ruddy young woman, who was his wife; “do I
trust her? Not half a morsel of her!” This young woman, a peasant woman
of remarkable personal attractions, served him with the fidelity of a
fascinated animal, and the dumbness of a wooden vessel. She could have
hanged him, had it pleased her. She had all his secrets: but it was not
vain speaking on Barto Rizzo's part; he was master of her will; and on
the occasions when he showed that he did not trust her, he was careful
at the same time to shock and subdue her senses. Her report of Vittoria
was, that she went to the house of the Signora, Laura Piaveni, widow of
the latest heroic son of Milan, and to that of the maestro Rocco Ricci;
to no other. It was also Luigi's report.

“She's true enough,” the woman said, evidently permitting herself to
entertain an opinion; a sign that she required fresh schooling.

“So are you,” said Barto, and eyed her in a way that made her ask, “Now,
what's for me to do?”

He thought awhile.

“You will see the colonel. Tell him to come in corporal's uniform.
What's the little wretch twisting her body for? Shan't I embrace her
presently if she's obedient? Send to the polizia. You believe your
husband is in the city, and will visit you in disguise at the corporal's
hour. They seize him. They also examine the house up to the point where
we seal it. Your object is to learn whether the Austrians are moving
men upon Milan. If they are-I learn something. When the house has been
examined, our court here will have rest for a good month ahead; and
it suits me not to be disturbed. Do this, and we will have a red-wine
evening in the house, shut up alone, my snake! my pepper-flower!”

It happened that Luigi was entering the court to keep an appointment
with Barto when he saw a handful of the polizia burst into the house and
drag out a soldier, who was in the uniform, as he guessed it to be, of
the Prohaska regiment. The soldier struggled and offered money to
them. Luigi could not help shouting, “You fools! don't you see he's an
officer?” Two of them took their captive aside. The rest made a search
through the house. While they were doing so Luigi saw Barto Rizzo's
face at the windows of the house opposite. He clamoured at the door, but
Barto was denied to him there. When the polizia had gone from the court,
he was admitted and allowed to look into every room. Not finding him, he
said, “Barto Rizzo does not keep his appointments, then!” The same words
were repeated in his ear when he had left the court, and was in
the street running parallel with it. “Barto Rizzo does not keep his
appointments, then!” It was Barto who smacked him on the back, and spoke
out his own name with brown-faced laughter in the bustling street. Luigi
was so impressed by his cunning and his recklessness that he at once
told him more than he wished to tell:--The Austrian officer was with his
sister, and had written to the signorina, and Luigi had delivered the
letter; but the signorina was at the maestro's, Rocco Ricci's, and there
was no answer: the officer was leaving for Verona in the morning. After
telling so much, Luigi drew back, feeling that he had given Barto his
full measure and owed to the signorina what remained.

Barto probably read nothing of the mind of his spy, but understood that
it was a moment for distrust of him. Vittoria and her mother lodged at
the house of one Zotti, a confectioner, dwelling between the Duomo and
La Scala. Luigi, at Barto's bidding, left word with Zotti that he would
call for the signorina's answer to a certain letter about sunrise. “I
promised my Rosellina, my poppyheaded sipper, a red-wine evening, or I
would hold this fellow under my eye till the light comes,” thought Barto
misgivingly, and let him go. Luigi slouched about the English lady's
hotel. At nightfall her brother came forth. Luigi directed him to be
in the square of the Duomo by sunrise, and slipped from his hold; the
officer ran after him some distance. “She can't say I was false to her
now,” said Luigi, dancing with nervous ecstasy. At sunrise Barto Rizzo
was standing under the shadow of the Duomo. Luigi passed him and went
to Zotti's house, where the letter was placed in his hand, and the
door shut in his face. Barto rushed to him, but Luigi, with a vixenish
countenance, standing like a humped cat, hissed, “Would you destroy my
reputation and have it seen that I deliver up letters, under the noses
of the writers, to the wrong persons?--ha! pestilence!” He ran, Barto
following him. They were crossed by the officer on horseback, who
challenged Luigi to give up the letter, which was very plainly being
thrust from his hand into his breast. The officer found it no difficult
matter to catch him and pluck the letter from him; he opened it, reading
it on the jog of the saddle as he cantered off. Luigi turned in a terror
of expostulation to ward Barto's wrath. Barto looked at him hard, while
he noted the matter down on the tablet of an ivory book. All he
said was, “I have that letter!” stamping the assertion with an oath.
Half-an-hour later Luigi saw Barto in the saddle, tight-legged about a
rusty beast, evidently bound for the South-eastern gate, his brows set
like a black wind. “Blessings on his going!” thought Luigi, and sang one
of his street-songs:--“O lemons, lemons, what a taste you leave in the
mouth! I desire you, I love you, but when I suck you, I'm all caught
up in a bundle and turn to water, like a wry-faced fountain. Why not be
satisfied by a sniff at the blossoms? There's gratification. Why did you
grow up from the precious little sweet chuck that you were, Marietta?
Lemons, O lemons! such a thing as a decent appetite is not known after
sucking at you.”

His natural horror of a resolute man, more than fear (of which he had no
recollection in the sunny Piazza), made him shiver and gave his tongue
an acid taste at the prospect of ever meeting Barto Rizzo again. There
was the prospect also that he might never meet him again.




CHAPTER IX

IN VERONA

The lieutenant read these lines, as he clattered through the quiet
streets toward the Porta Tosa:

'DEAR FRIEND,--I am glad that you remind me of our old affection, for
it assures me that yours is not dead. I cannot consent to see you yet. I
would rather that we should not meet.

'I thought I would sign my name here, and say, “God bless you, Wilfrid;
go!”

'Oh! why have you done this thing! I must write on. It seems like my
past life laughing at me, that my old friend should have come here in
Italy, to wear the detestable uniform. How can we be friends when we
must act as enemies? We shall soon be in arms, one against the other.
I pity you, for you have chosen a falling side; and when you are beaten
back, you can have no pride in your country, as we Italians have; no
delight, no love. They will call you a mercenary soldier. I remember
that I used to have the fear of your joining our enemies, when we were
in England, but it seemed too much for my reason.

'You are with a band of butchers. If I could see you and tell you the
story of Giacomo Piaveni, and some other things, I believe you would
break your sword instantly.

'There is time. Come to Milan on the fifteenth. You will see me then. I
appear at La Scala. Promise me, if you hear me, that you will do exactly
what I make you feel it right to do. Ah, you will not, though thousands
will! But step aside to me, when the curtain falls, and remain--oh, dear
friend! I write in honour to you; we have sworn to free the city and the
country--remain among us: break your sword, tear off your uniform; we
are so strong that we are irresistible. I know what a hero you can be on
the field: then, why not in the true cause? I do not understand that
you should waste your bravery under that ugly flag, bloody and past
forgiveness.

'I shall be glad to have news of you all, and of England. The bearer of
this is a trusty messenger, and will continue to call at the hotel. A.
is offended that I do not allow my messenger to give my address; but I
must not only be hidden, I must have peace, and forget you all until I
have done my task. Addio. We have both changed names. I am the same. Can
I think that you are? Addio, dear friend.

                 'VITTORIA.'


Lieutenant Pierson read again and again the letter of her whom he had
loved in England, to get new lights from it, as lovers do when they have
lost the power to take single impressions. He was the bearer of a verbal
despatch from the commandant in Milan to the Marshal in Verona. At that
period great favour was shown to Englishmen in the Austrian service, and
the lieutenant's uncle being a General of distinction, he had a sort of
semi-attachment to the Marshal's staff, and was hurried to and fro,
for the purpose of keeping him out of duelling scrapes, as many of his
friendlier comrades surmised. The right to the distinction of exercising
staff-duties is, of course, only to be gained by stout competitorship in
the Austrian service; but favour may do something for a young man even
in that rigorous school of Arms. He had to turn to Brescia on his way,
and calculated that if luck should put good horses under him, he would
enter Verona gates about sunset. Meantime; there was Vittoria's letter
to occupy him as he went.

We will leave him to his bronzing ride through the mulberries and the
grapes, and the white and yellow and arid hues of the September plain,
and make acquaintance with some of his comrades of that proud army which
Vittoria thought would stand feebly against the pouring tide of Italian
patriotism.

The fairest of the cities of the plain had long been a nest of foreign
soldiery. The life of its beauty was not more visible then than now.
Within the walls there are glimpses of it, that belong rather to the
haunting spirit than to the life. Military science has made a mailed
giant of Verona, and a silent one, save upon occasion. Its face grins
of war, like a skeleton of death; the salient image of the skull and
congregating worms was one that Italian lyrists applied naturally to
Verona.

The old Field-Marshal and chief commander of the Austrian forces in
Lombardy, prompted by the counsels of his sagacious adlatus, the chief
of the staff, was engaged at that period in adding some of those ugly
round walls and flanking bastions to Verona, upon which, when Austria
was thrown back by the first outburst of the insurrection and the
advance of the Piedmontese, she was enabled to plant a sturdy hind-foot,
daring her foes as from a rock of defence.

A group of officers, of the cavalry, with a few infantry uniforms
skirting them, were sitting in the pleasant cooling evening air, fanned
by the fresh springing breeze, outside one of the Piazza Bra caffes,
close upon the shadow of the great Verona amphitheatre. They were
smoking their attenuated long straw cigars, sipping iced lemonade or
coffee, and talking the common talk of the garrison officers, with
perhaps that additional savour of a robust immorality which a Viennese
social education may give. The rounded ball of the brilliant September
moon hung still aloft, lighting a fathomless sky as well as the fair
earth. It threw solid blackness from the old savage walls almost to a
junction with their indolent outstretched feet. Itinerant street music
twittered along the Piazza; officers walked arm-in-arm; now in moonlight
bright as day, now in a shadow black as night: distant figures twinkled
with the alternation. The light lay like a blade's sharp edge around the
massive circle. Of Italians of a superior rank, Verona sent none to
this resort. Even the melon-seller stopped beneath the arch ending the
Stradone Porta Nuova, as if he had reached a marked limit of his popular
customers.

This isolation of the rulers of Lombardy had commenced in Milan, but,
owing to particular causes, was not positively defined there as it was
in Verona. War was already rageing between the Veronese ladies and the
officers of Austria. According to the Gallic Terpsichorean code, a
lady who permits herself to make election of her partners and to reject
applicants to the honour of her hand in the dance, when that hand is
disengaged, has no just ground of complaint if a glove should smite her
cheek. The Austrians had to endure this sort of rejection in Ballrooms.
On the promenade their features were forgotten. They bowed to statues.
Now, the officers of Austria who do not belong to a Croat regiment,
or to one drawn from any point of the extreme East of the empire, are
commonly gentlemanly men; and though they can be vindictive after much
irritation, they may claim at least as good a reputation for forbearance
in a conquered country as our officers in India. They are not
ill-humoured, and they are not peevishly arrogant, except upon
provocation. The conduct of the tender Italian dames was vexatious. It
was exasperating to these knights of the slumbering sword to hear their
native waltzes sounding of exquisite Vienna, while their legs stretched
in melancholy inactivity on the Piazza pavement, and their arms
encircled no ductile waists. They tried to despise it more than they
disliked it, called their female foes Amazons, and their male by a less
complimentary title, and so waited for the patriotic epidemic to pass.

A certain Captain Weisspriess, of the regiment named after a sagacious
monarch whose crown was the sole flourishing blossom of diplomacy,
particularly distinguished himself by insisting that a lady should
remember him in public places. He was famous for skill with his weapons.
He waltzed admirably; erect as under his Field-Marshal's eye. In the
language of his brother officers, he was successful; that is, even
as God Mars when Bellona does not rage. Captain Weisspriess (Johann
Nepomuk, Freiherr von Scheppenhausen) resembled in appearance one in the
Imperial Royal service, a gambling General of Division, for whom
Fame had not yet blown her blast. Rumour declared that they might be
relatives; a little-scrupulous society did not hesitate to mention
how. The captain's moustache was straw-coloured; he wore it beyond the
regulation length and caressed it infinitely. Surmounted by a pair
of hot eyes, wavering in their direction, this grand moustache was a
feature to be forgotten with difficulty, and Weisspriess was doubtless
correct in asserting that his face had endured a slight equal to a
buffet. He stood high and square-shouldered; the flame of the moustache
streamed on either side his face in a splendid curve; his vigilant head
was loftily posted to detect what he chose to construe as insult,
or gather the smiles of approbation, to which, owing to the unerring
judgement of the sex, he was more accustomed. Handsome or not, he
enjoyed the privileges of masculine beauty.

This captain of a renown to come pretended that a superb Venetian lady
of the Branciani family was bound to make response in public to his
private signals, and publicly to reply to his salutations. He refused to
be as a particle in space floating airily before her invincible aspect.
Meeting her one evening, ere sweet Italy had exiled herself from the
Piazza, he bowed, and stepping to the front of her, bowed pointedly.
She crossed her arms and gazed over him. He called up a thing to her
recollection in resonant speech. Shameful lie, or shameful truth, it was
uttered in the hearing of many of his brother officers, of three Italian
ladies, and of an Italian gentleman, Count Broncini, attending them. The
lady listened calmly. Count Broncini smote him on the face. That evening
the lady's brother arrived from Venice, and claimed his right to defend
her. Captain Weisspriess ran him through the body, and attached a
sinister label to his corpse. This he did not so much from brutality;
the man felt that henceforth while he held his life he was at war with
every Italian gentleman of mettle. Count Broncini was his next victim.
There, for a time, the slaughtering business of the captain stopped.
His brother officers of the better kind would not have excused him at
another season, but the avenger of their irritation and fine vindicator
of the merits of Austrian steel, had a welcome truly warm, when at the
termination of his second duel he strode into mess, or what serves for
an Austrian regimental mess.

It ensued naturally that there was everywhere in Verona a sharp division
between the Italians of all classes and their conquerors. The great
green-rinded melons were never wheeled into the neighbourhood of the
whitecoats. Damsels were no longer coquettish under the military glance,
but hurried by in couples; and there was much scowling mixed with
derisive servility, throughout the city, hard to be endured without that
hostile state of the spirit which is the military mind's refuge in
such cases. Itinerant musicians, and none but this fry, continued to be
attentive to the dispensers of soldi.

The Austrian army prides itself upon being a brotherhood. Discipline is
very strict, but all commissioned officers, when off duty, are as free
in their intercourse as big boys. The General accepts a cigar from the
lieutenant, and in return lifts his glass to him. The General takes an
interest in his lieutenant's love-affairs: nor is the latter shy when
he feels it his duty modestly to compliment his superior officer upon a
recent conquest. There is really good fellowship both among the officers
and in the ranks, and it is systematically encouraged.

The army of Austria was in those days the Austrian Empire. Outside
the army the empire was a jealous congery of intriguing disaffected
nationalities. The same policy which played the various States against
one another in order to reduce all to subserviency to the central Head,
erected a privileged force wherein the sentiment of union was fostered
till it became a nationality of the sword. Nothing more fatal can be
done for a country; but for an army it is a simple measure of wisdom.
Where the password is MARCH, and not DEVELOP, a body of men, to be a
serviceable instrument, must consent to act as one. Hannibal is the
historic example of what a General can accomplish with tribes who are
thus, enrolled in a new citizenship; and (as far as we know of him and
his fortunes) he appears to be an example of the necessity of the fusing
fire of action to congregated aliens in arms. When Austria was fighting
year after year, and being worsted in campaign after campaign, she lost
foot by foot, but she held together soundly; and more than the baptism,
the atmosphere of strife has always been required to give her a healthy
vitality as a centralized empire. She knew it; this (apart from the
famous promptitude of the Hapsburgs) was one secret of her dauntless
readiness to fight. War did the work of a smithy for the iron and steel
holding her together; and but that war costs money, she would have been
an empire distinguished by aggressiveness. The next best medicinal thing
to war is the military occupation of insurgent provinces. The soldiery
soon feel where their home is, and feel the pride of atomies in unitive
power, when they are sneered at, hooted, pelted, stabbed upon a gross
misinterpretation of the slightest of moral offences, shamefully abused
for doing their duty with a considerate sense of it, and too accurately
divided from the inhabitants of the land they hold. In Italy, the
German, the Czech, the Magyar, the Croft, even in general instances the
Italian, clung to the standard for safety, for pay, for glory, and all
became pre-eminently Austrian soldiers; little besides.

It was against a power thus bound in iron hoops, that Italy,
dismembered, and jealous, and corrupt, with an organization promoted by
passion chiefly, was preparing to rise. In the end, a country true to
itself and determined to claim God's gift to brave men will overmatch a
mere army, however solid its force. But an inspired energy of faith is
demanded of it. The intervening chapters will show pitiable weakness,
and such a schooling of disaster as makes men, looking on the surface
of things, deem the struggle folly. As well, they might say, let yonder
scuffling vagabonds up any of the Veronese side-streets fall upon the
patrol marching like one man, and hope to overcome them! In Vienna there
was often despair: but it never existed in the Austrian camp. Vienna was
frequently double-dealing and time-serving her force in arms was like
a trained man feeling his muscle. Thus, when the Government thought of
temporizing, they issued orders to Generals whose one idea was to strike
the blow of a mallet.

At this period there was no suspicion of any grand revolt being in
process of development. The abounding dissatisfaction was treated as
nothing more than the Italian disease showing symptoms here and there,
and Vienna counselled measures mildly repressive,--'conciliating,'
it was her pleasure to call them. Her recent commands with respect to
turbulent Venice were the subject of criticism among the circle outside
the Piazza Gaffe. An enforced inactivity of the military legs will
quicken the military wits, it would appear, for some of the younger
officers spoke hotly as to their notion of the method of ruling Venezia.
One had bidden his Herr General to 'look here,' while he stretched forth
his hand and declared that Italians were like women, and wanted--yes,
wanted--(their instinct called for it) a beating, a real beating; as
the emphatic would say in our vernacular, a thundering thrashing, once a
month:-'Or so,' the General added acquiescingly. A thundering thrashing,
once a month or so, to these unruly Italians, because they are like
women! It was a youth who spoke, but none doubted his acquaintance with
women, or cared to suggest that his education in that department of
knowledge was an insufficient guarantee for his fitness to govern
Venezia. Two young dragoon officers had approached during the fervid
allocution, and after the salute to their superior, caught up chairs
and stamped them down, thereupon calling for the loan of anybody's
cigar-case. Where it is that an Austrian officer ordinarily keeps
this instrument so necessary to his comfort, and obnoxious, one would
suppose, to the rigid correctness of his shapely costume, we
cannot easily guess. None can tell even where he stows away his
pocket-handkerchief, or haply his purse. However, these things appear on
demand. Several elongated cigar-cases were thrust forward, and then it
was seen that the attire of the gallant youngsters was in disorder.

'Did you hunt her to earth?' they were asked.

The reply trenched on philosophy; and consisted in an inquiry as to who
cared for the whole basketful--of the like description of damsels, being
implied. Immoderate and uproarious laughter burst around them. Both
seemed to have been clawed impartially. Their tightfitting coats bulged
at the breast or opened at the waist, as though buttons were lacking,
and the whiteness of that garment cried aloud for the purification of
pipeclay. Questions flew. The damsel who had been pursued was known as
a pretty girl, the daughter of a blacksmith, and no prolonged resistance
was expected from one of her class. But, as it came out, she had said,
a week past, 'I shall be stabbed if I am seen talking to you'; and
therefore the odd matter was, not that she had, in tripping down the
Piazza with her rogue-eyed cousin from Milan, looked away and declined
all invitation to moderate her pace and to converse, but that, after
doubling down and about lonely streets, the length of which she ran as
swiftly as her feet would carry her, at a corner of the Via Colomba she
allowed herself to be caught--wilfully, beyond a doubt, seeing that she
was not a bit breathed--allowed one quick taste of her lips, and then
shrieked as naturally as a netted bird, and brought a hustling crowd
just at that particular point to her rescue: not less than fifty, and
all men. 'Not a woman among them!' the excited young officer repeated.

A veteran in similar affairs could see that he had the wish to remain
undisturbed in his bewilderment at the damsel's conduct. Profound
belief in her partiality for him perplexed his recent experience rather
agreeably. Indeed, it was at this epoch an article of faith with the
Austrian military that nothing save terror of their males kept
sweet Italian women from the expression of their preference for the
broad-shouldered, thick-limbed, yellow-haired warriors--the contrast
to themselves which is supposed greatly to inspirit genial Cupid in the
selection from his quiver.

'What became of her? Did you let her go?' came pestering remarks, too
absurd for replies if they had not been so persistent.

'Let her go? In the devil's name, how was I to keep my hold of her in
a crowd of fifty of the fellows, all mowing, and hustling, and
elbowing--every rascal stinking right under my nose like the pit?'

''Hem!' went the General present. 'As long as you did not draw!
Unsheathe, a minute.'

He motioned for a sight of their naked swords.

The couple of young officers flushed.

'Herr General! Pardon!' they remonstrated.

'No, no. I know how boys talk; I've been one myself. Tutt! You tell the
truth, of course; but the business is for me to know in what! how far!
Your swords, gentlemen.'

'But, General!'

'Well? I merely wish to examine the blades.'

'Do you doubt our words?'

'Hark at them! Words? Are you lawyers? A soldier deals in acts. I don't
want to know your words, but your deeds, my gallant lads. I want to look
at the blades of your swords, my children. What was the last order? That
on no account were we to provoke, or, if possibly to be avoided, accept
a collision, etc., etc. The soldier in peace is a citizen, etc. No sword
on any account, or for any excuse, to be drawn, etc. You all heard it?
So, good! I receive your denial, my children. In addition, I merely
desire to satisfy curiosity. Did the guard clear a way for you?'

The answer was affirmative.

'Your swords!'

One of them drew, and proffered the handle.

The other clasped the haft angrily, and with a resolute smack on it,
settled it in the scabbard.

'Am I a prisoner, General?'

'Not at all!'

'Then I decline to surrender my sword.'

Another General officer happened to be sauntering by. Applauding with
his hands, and choosing the Italian language as the best form of speech
for the enunciation of ironical superlatives, he said:

'Eccellentemente! most admirable! of a distinguished loftiness of moral
grandeur: “Then I decline,” etc.: you are aware that you are quoting?
“as the drummerboy said to Napoleon.” I think you forgot to add that? It
is the same young soldier who utters these immense things, which we can
hardly get out of our mouths. So the little fellow towers! His moral
greatness is as noisy as his drum. What's wrong?'

'General Pierson, nothing's wrong,' was replied by several voices; and
some explained that Lieutenant Jenna had been called upon by General
Schoneck to show his sword, and had refused.

The heroic defender of his sword shouted to the officer with whom
General Pierson had been conversing: 'Here! Weisspriess!'

'What is it, my dear fellow? Speak, my good Jenna!'

The explanation was given, and full sympathy elicited from Captain
Weisspriess, while the two Generals likewise whispered and nodded.

'Did you draw?' the captain inquired, yawning. 'You needn't say it
in quite so many words, if you did. I shall be asked by the General
presently; and owing to that duel pending 'twixt you and his nephew, of
which he is aware, he may put a bad interpretation on your pepperiness.'

'The devil fetch his nephew!' returned the furious Lieutenant Jenna. 'He
comes back to-night from Milan, and if he doesn't fight me to-morrow, I
post him a coward. Well, about that business! My good Weisspriess, the
fellows had got into a thick crowd all round, and had begun to knead me.
Do you understand me? I felt their knuckles.'

'Ah, good, good!' said the captain. 'Then, you didn't draw, of course.
What officer of the Imperial service would, under similar circumstances!
That is my reply to the Emperor, if ever I am questioned. To draw would
be to show that an Austrian officer relies on his good sword in
the thick of his enemies; against which, as you know, my Jenna, the
Government have issued an express injunction button. Did you sell it
dear?'

'A fellow parted with his ear for it.'

Lieutenant Jenna illustrated a particular cut from a turn of his wrist.

'That oughtn't to make a noise?' he queried somewhat anxiously.

'It won't hear one any longer, at all events,' said Captain Weisspriess;
and the two officers entered into the significance of the remark with
enjoyment.

Meantime General Pierson had concluded an apparently humorous dialogue
with his brother General, and the later, now addressing Lieutenant
Jenna, said: 'Since you prefer surrendering your person rather than your
sword--it is good! Report yourself at the door of my room to-night, at
ten. I suspect that you have been blazing your steel, sir. They say,
'tis as ready to flash out as your temper.'

Several voices interposed: 'General! what if he did draw!'

'Silence. You have read the recent order. Orlando may have his
Durindarda bare; but you may not. Grasp that fact. The Government wish
to make Christians of you, my children. One cheek being smitten, what
should you do?'

'Shall I show you, General?' cried a quick little subaltern.

'The order, my children, as received a fortnight since from our old
Wien, commands you to offer the other cheek to the smiter.'

'So that a proper balance may be restored to both sides of the face,'
General Pierson appended.

'And mark me,' he resumed. 'There may be doubts about the policy of
anything, though I shouldn't counsel you to cherish them: but there's
no mortal doubt about the punishment for this thing.' The General spoke
sternly; and then relaxing the severity of his tone, he said, 'The
desire of the Government is to make an army of Christians.'

'And a precious way of doing it!' interjected two or three of the
younger officers. They perfectly understood how hateful the Viennese
domination was to their chiefs, and that they would meet sympathy
and tolerance for any extreme of irony, provided that they showed a
disposition to be subordinate. For the bureaucratic order, whatever it
was, had to be obeyed. The army might, and of course did, know best:
nevertheless it was bound to be nothing better than a machine in the
hands of the dull closeted men in Vienna, who judged of difficulties
and plans of action from a calculation of numbers, or from foreign
journals--from heaven knows what!

General Schoneck and General Pierson walked away laughing, and
the younger officers were left to themselves. Half-a-dozen of them
interlaced arms, striding up toward the Porta Nuova, near which, at the
corner of the Via Trinita, they had the pleasant excitement of beholding
a riderless horse suddenly in mid gallop sink on its knees and roll
over. A crowd came pouring after it, and from the midst the voice of
a comrade hailed them. 'It's Pierson,' cried Lieutenant Jenna. The
officers drew their swords, and hailed the guard from the gates.
Lieutenant Pierson dropped in among their shoulders, dead from want of
breath. They held him up, and finding him sound, thumped his back. The
blade of his sword was red. He coughed with their thumpings, and sang
out to them to cease; the idle mob which had been at his heels drew back
before the guard could come up with them. Lieutenant Pierson gave no
explanation except that he had been attacked near Juliet's tomb on his
way to General Schoneck's quarters. Fellows had stabbed his horse, and
brought him to the ground, and torn the coat off his back. He complained
in bitter mutterings of the loss of a letter therein, during the first
candid moments of his anger: and, as he was known to be engaged to the
Countess Lena von Lenkenstein, it was conjectured by his comrades that
this lady might have had something to do with the ravishment of the
letter. Great laughter surrounded him, and he looked from man to man.
Allowance is naturally made for the irascibility of a brother officer
coming tattered out of the hands of enemies, or Lieutenant Jenna would
have construed his eye's challenge on the spot. As it was, he cried out,
'The letter! the letter! Charge, for the honour of the army, and rescue
the letter!' Others echoed him: 'The letter! the letter! the English
letter!' A foreigner in an army can have as much provocation as he
pleases; if he is anything of a favourite with his superiors, his
fellows will task his forbearance. Wilfrid Pierson glanced at the blade
of his sword, and slowly sheathed it. 'Lieutenant Jenna is a good actor
before a mob,' he said. 'Gentlemen, I rely upon you to make no noise
about that letter; it is a private matter. In an hour or so, if any
officer shall choose to question me concerning it, I will answer him.'

The last remnants of the mob had withdrawn. The officer in command at
the gates threw a cloak over Wilfrid's shoulders; and taking the arm of
a friend Wilfrid hurried to barracks, and was quickly in a position to
report himself to his General, whose first remark, 'Has the dead horse
been removed?' robbed him of his usual readiness to equivocate. 'When
you are the bearer of a verbal despatch, come straight to quarters,
if you have to come like a fig-tree on the north side of the wall in
Winter,' said General Schoneck, who was joined presently by General
Pierson.

'What 's this I hear of some letter you have been barking about all
over the city?' the latter asked, after returning his nephew's on-duty
salute.

Wilfrid replied that it was a letter of his sister's treating of family
matters.

The two Generals, who were close friends, discussed the attack to which
he had been subjected. Wilfrid had to recount it with circumstance: how,
as he was nearing General Schoneck's quarters at a military trot, six
men headed by a leader had dashed out on him from a narrow side-street,
unhorsed him after a struggle, rifled the saddlebags, and torn the coat
from his back, and had taken the mark of his sword, while a gathering
crowd looked on, hooting. His horse had fled, and he confessed that he
had followed his horse. General Schoneck spoke the name of Countess Lena
suggestively. 'Not a bit,' returned General Pierson; 'the fellow courts
her too hotly. The scoundrels here want a bombardment; that 's where it
lies. A dose of iron pills will make Verona a healthy place. She must
have it.'

General Schoneck said, 'I hope not,' and laughed at the heat of Irish
blood. He led Wilfrid in to the Marshal, after which Wilfrid was free to
seek Lieutenant Jenna, who had gained the right to a similar freedom by
pledging his honour not to fight within a stipulated term of days. The
next morning Wilfrid was roused by an orderly coming from his uncle, who
placed in his hands a copy of Vittoria's letter: at the end of it his
uncle had written, 'Rather astonishing. Done pretty well; but by a
foreigner. “Affection” spelt with one “f.” An Italian: you will see the
letters are emphatic at “ugly flag”; also “bloody and past forgiveness”
 very large; the copyist had a dash of the feelings of a commentator, and
did his (or her) best to add an oath to it. Who the deuce, sir, is this
opera girl calling herself Vittoria? I have a lecture for you. German
women don't forgive diversions during courtship; and if you let this
Countess Lena slip, your chance has gone. I compliment you on your power
of lying; but you must learn to show your right face to me, or the very
handsome feature, your nose, and that useful box, your skull, will
come to grief. The whole business is a mystery. The letter (copy) was
directed to you, brought to me, and opened in a fit of abstraction,
necessary to commanding uncles who are trying to push the fortunes of
young noodles pretending to be related to them. Go to Countess Lena.
Count Paul is with her, from Bologna. Speak to her, and observe her and
him. He knows English--has been attached to the embassy in London; but,
pooh! the hand's Italian. I confess myself puzzled. We shall possibly
have to act on the intimation of the fifteenth, and profess to be
wiser than others. Something is brewing for business. See Countess Lena
boldly, and then come and breakfast with me.'

Wilfrid read the miserable copy of Vittoria's letter, utterly unable to
resolve anything in his mind, except that he would know among a thousand
the leader of those men who had attacked him, and who bore the mark of
his sword.




CHAPTER X

THE POPE'S MOUTH

Barto Rizzo had done what he had sworn to do. He had not found it
difficult to outstrip the lieutenant (who had to visit Brescia on his
way) and reach the gates of Verona in advance of him, where he obtained
entrance among a body of grape-gatherers and others descending from the
hills to meet a press of labour in the autumnal plains. With them
he hoped to issue forth unchallenged on the following morning; but
Wilfrid's sword had made lusty play; and, as in the case when the order
has been given that a man shall be spared in life and limb, Barto and
his fellow-assailants suffered by their effort to hold him simply half a
minute powerless. He received a shrewd cut across the head, and lay for
a couple of hours senseless in the wine-shop of one Battista--one of
the many all over Lombardy who had pledged their allegiance to the Great
Cat, thinking him scarcely vulnerable. He read the letter, dizzy with
pain, and with the frankness proper to inflated spirits after loss of
blood, he owned to himself that it was not worth much as a prize. It was
worth the attempt to get possession of it, for anything is worth what
it costs, if it be only as a schooling in resolution, energy, and
devotedness:--regrets are the sole admission of a fruitless business;
they show the bad tree;--so, according to his principle of action, he
deliberated; but he was compelled to admit that Vittoria's letter was
little else than a repetition of her want of discretion when she was on
the Motterone. He admitted it, wrathfully: his efforts to convict this
woman telling him she deserved some punishment; and his suspicions being
unsatisfied, he resolved to keep them hungry upon her, and return to
Milan at once. As to the letter itself, he purposed, since the harm in
it was accomplished, to send it back honourably to the lieutenant, till
finding it blood-stained, he declined to furnish the gratification of
such a sight to any Austrian sword. For that reason, he copied it, while
Battista's wife held double bandages tight round his head: believing
that the letter stood transcribed in a precisely similar hand, he
forwarded it to Lieutenant Pierson, and then sank and swooned. Two days
he lay incapable and let his thoughts dance as they would. Information
was brought to him that the gates were strictly watched, and that troops
were starting for Milan. This was in the dull hour antecedent to the
dawn. 'She is a traitress!' he exclaimed, and leaping from his bed, as
with a brain striking fire, screamed, 'Traitress! traitress!' Battista
and his wife had to fling themselves on him and gag him, guessing him
as mad. He spoke pompously and theatrically; called himself the Eye of
Italy, and said that he must be in Milan, or Milan would perish, because
of the traitress: all with a great sullen air of composure and an odd
distension of the eyelids. When they released him, he smiled and thanked
them, though they knew, that had he chosen, he could have thrown off a
dozen of them, such was his strength. The woman went down on her knees
to him to get his consent that she should dress and bandage his head
afresh. The sound of the regimental bugles drew him from the house,
rather than any immediate settled scheme to watch at the gates.

Artillery and infantry were in motion before sunrise, from various
points of the city, bearing toward the Palio and Zeno gates, and the
people turned out to see them, for it was a march that looked like the
beginning of things. The soldiers had green twigs in their hats, and
kissed their hands good-humouredly to the gazing crowd, shouting bits of
verses:

'I'm off! I'm off! Farewell, Mariandl! if I come back a sergeant-major
or a Field-Marshal, don't turn up your nose at me: Swear you will be
faithful all the while; because, when a woman swears, it's a comfort,
somehow: Farewell! Squeeze the cow's udders: I shall be thirsty enough:
You pretty wriggler! don't you know, the first cup of wine and the
last, I shall float your name on it? Luck to the lads we leave behind!
Farewell, Mariandl!'

The kindly fellows waved their hands and would take no rebuff. The
soldiery of Austria are kindlier than most, until their blood is up.
A Tyrolese regiment passed, singing splendidly in chorus. Songs of
sentiment prevailed, but the traditions of a soldier's experience of the
sex have informed his ballads with strange touches of irony, that help
him to his (so to say) philosophy, which is recklessness. The Tyroler's
'Katchen' here, was a saturnine Giulia, who gave him no response, either
of eye or lip.

'Little mother, little sister, little sweetheart, 'ade! ade!' My little
sweetheart, your meadow is half-way up the mountain; it's such a green
spot on the eyeballs of a roving boy! and the chapel just above it, I
shall see it as I've seen it a thousand times; and the cloud hangs near
it, and moves to the door and enters, for it is an angel, not a cloud; a
white angel gone in to pray for Katerlein and me: Little mother, little
sister, little sweetheart, 'ade! ade!' Keep single, Katerlein, as long
as you can: as long as you can hold out, keep single: 'ade!''

Fifteen hundred men and six guns were counted as they marched on to one
gate.

Barto Rizzo, with Battista and his wife on each side of him, were among
the spectators. The black cock's feathers of the Tyrolese were still
fluttering up the Corso, when the woman said, 'I 've known the tail of a
regiment get through the gates without having to show paper.'

Battista thereupon asked Barto whether he would try that chance. The
answer was a vacuous shake of the head, accompanied by an expression
of unutterable mournfulness. 'There's no other way,' pursued Battista,
'unless you jump into the Adige, and swim down half-a-mile under water;
and cats hate water--eh, my comico?'

He conceived that the sword-cut had rendered Barto imbecile, and pulled
his hat down his forehead, and patted his shoulder, and bade him have
cheer, patronizingly: but women do not so lightly lose their impression
of a notable man. His wife checked him. Barto had shut his eyes, and
hung swaying between them, as in drowsiness or drunkenness. Like his
body, his faith was swaying within him. He felt it borne upon the
reeling brain, and clung to it desperately, calling upon chance to aid
him; for he was weak, incapable of a physical or mental contest, and
this part of his settled creed that human beings alone failed the
patriotic cause as instruments, while circumstances constantly
befriended it--was shocked by present events. The image of Vittoria,
the traitress, floated over the soldiery marching on Milan through her
treachery. Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible. He had
to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened,
in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered
system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not
come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies
undisturbed--if only men will have the faith, and will teach themselves
to know that the inspiration must come, and will counsel them justly.
This was a part of Barto Rizzo's sustaining creed; nor did he lose his
grasp of it in the torment and the darkness of his condition.

He heard English voices. A carriage had stopped almost in front of him.
A General officer was hat in hand, talking to a lady, who called him
uncle, and said that she had been obliged to decide to quit Verona on
account of her husband, to whom the excessive heat was unendurable.
Her husband, in the same breath, protested that the heat killed him.
He adorned the statement with all kinds of domestic and subterranean
imagery, and laughed faintly, saying that after the fifteenth--on which
night his wife insisted upon going to the Opera at Milan to hear a new
singer and old friend--he should try a week at the Baths of Bormio, and
only drop from the mountains when a proper temperature reigned, he being
something of an invalid.

'And, uncle, will you be in Milan on the fifteenth?' said the lady; 'and
Wilfrid, too?'

'Wilfrid will reach Milan as soon as you do, and I shall undoubtedly be
there on the fifteenth,' said the General.

'I cannot possibly express to you how beautiful I think your army
looks,' said the lady.

'Fine men, General Pierson, very fine men. I never saw such
marching--equal to our Guards,' her husband remarked.

The lady named her Milanese hotel as the General waved his plumes,
nodded, and rode off.

Before the carriage had started, Barto Rizzo dashed up to it; and 'Dear
good English lady,' he addressed her, 'I am the brother of Luigi, who
carries letters for you in Milan--little Luigi!--and I have a mother
dying in Milan; and here I am in Verona, ill, and can't get to her, poor
soul! Will you allow me that I may sit up behind as quiet as a mouse,
and be near one of the lovely English ladies who are so kind to
unfortunate persons, and never deaf to the name of charity? It's my
mother who is dying, poor soul!'

The lady consulted her husband's face, which presented the total blank
of one who refused to be responsible for an opinion hostile to the
claims of charity, while it was impossible for him to fall in with
foreign habits of familiarity, and accede to extraordinary petitions.
Barto sprang up. 'I shall be your courier, dear lady,' he said, and
commenced his professional career in her service by shouting to the
vetturino to drive on. Wilfrid met them as he was trotting down from
the Porta del Palio, and to him his sister confided her new trouble in
having a strange man attached to her, who might be anything. 'We don't
know the man,' said her husband; and Adela pleaded for him: 'Don't speak
to him harshly, pray, Wilfrid; he says he has a mother dying in Milan.'
Barto kept his head down on his arms and groaned; Adela gave a doleful
little grimace. 'Oh, take the poor beggar,' said Wilfrid; and sang out
to him in Italian: 'Who are you--what are you, my fine fellow?' Barto
groaned louder, and replied in Swiss-French from a smothering depth: 'A
poor man, and the gracious lady's servant till we reach Milan.'

'I can't wait,' said Wilfrid; 'I start in half-an-hour. It's all right;
you must take him now you've got him, or else pitch him out--one of the
two. If things go on quietly we shall have the Autumn manoeuvres in a
week, and then you may see something of the army.' He rode away. Barto
passed the gates as one of the licenced English family.

Milan was more strictly guarded than when he had quitted it. He had
anticipated that it would be so, and tamed his spirit to submit to the
slow stages of the carriage, spent a fiery night in Brescia, and entered
the city of action on the noon of the fourteenth. Safe within the walls,
he thanked the English lady, assuring her that her charitable deed would
be remembered aloft. He then turned his steps in the direction of the
Revolutionary post-office. This place was nothing other than a blank
abutment of a corner house that had long been undergoing repair, and
had a great bank of brick and mortar rubbish at its base. A stationary
melonseller and some black fig and vegetable stalls occupied the
triangular space fronting it. The removal of a square piece of
cement showed a recess, where, chiefly during the night, letters and
proclamation papers were deposited, for the accredited postman to
disperse them. Hither, as one would go to a caffe for the news, Barto
Rizzo came in the broad glare of noon, and flinging himself down like a
tired man under the strip of shade, worked with a hand behind him, and
drew out several folded scraps, of which one was addressed to him by his
initials. He opened it and read:

'Your house is watched.

'A corporal of the P... ka regiment was seen leaving it this morning in
time for the second bugle.

'Reply:--where to meet.

'Spies are doubled, troops coming.

'The numbers in Verona; who heads them.

'Look to your wife.

'Letters are called for every third hour.'

Barto sneered indolently at this fresh evidence of the small amount of
intelligence which he could ever learn from others. He threw his eyes
all round the vacant space while pencilling in reply:--'V. waits for M.,
but in a box' (that is, Verona for Milan). 'We take the key to her.

'I have no wife, but a little pupil.

'A Lieutenant Pierson, of the dragoons; Czech white coats, helmets
without plumes; an Englishman, nephew of General Pierson: speaks
crippled Italian; returns from V. to-day. Keep eye on him;--what house,
what hour.'

Meditating awhile, Barto wrote out Vittoria's name and enclosed it in a
thick black ring.

Beneath it he wrote

'The same on all the play-bills.

'The Fifteenth is cancelled.

'We meet the day after.

'At the house of Count M. to-night.'

He secreted this missive, and wrote Vittoria's name on numbers of slips
to divers addresses, heading them, 'From the Pope's Mouth,' such being
the title of the Revolutionary postoffice, to whatsoever spot it might
in prudence shift. The title was entirely complimentary to his
Holiness. Tangible freedom, as well as airy blessings, were at that time
anticipated, and not without warrant, from the mouth of the successor of
St. Peter. From the Pope's Mouth the clear voice of Italian liberty was
to issue. This sentiment of the period was a natural and a joyful one,
and endowed the popular ebullition with a sense of unity and a stamp of
righteousness that the abstract idea of liberty could not assure to it
before martyrdom. After suffering, after walking in the shades of death
and despair, men of worth and of valour cease to take high personages as
representative objects of worship, even when these (as the good Pope was
then doing) benevolently bless the nation and bid it to have great hope,
with a voice of authority. But, for an extended popular movement a great
name is like a consecrated banner. Proclamations from the Pope's Mouth
exacted reverence, and Barto Rizzo, who despised the Pope (because he
was Pope, doubtless), did not hesitate to make use of him by virtue of
his office.

Barto lay against the heap of rubbish, waiting for the approach of his
trained lad, Checco, a lanky simpleton, cunning as a pure idiot, who was
doing postman's duty, when a kick, delivered by that youth behind,
sent him bounding round with rage, like a fish in air. The marketplace
resounded with a clapping of hands; for it was here that Checco
came daily to eat figs, and it was known that the 'povero,' the dear
half-witted creature, would not tolerate an intruder in the place where
he stretched his limbs to peel and suck in the gummy morsels twice or
thrice a day. Barto seized and shook him. Checco knocked off his hat;
the bandage about the wound broke and dropped, and Barto put his hand to
his forehead, murmuring: 'What 's come to me that I lose my temper with
a boy--an animal?'

The excitement all over the triangular space was hushed by an imperious
guttural shout that scattered the groups. Two Austrian officers,
followed by military servants, rode side by side. Dust had whitened
their mustachios, and the heat had laid a brown-red varnish on their
faces. Way was made for them, while Barto stood smoothing his forehead
and staring at Checco.

'I see the very man!' cried one of the officers quickly. 'Weisspriess,
there's the rascal who headed the attack on me in Verona the other day.
It's the same!

'Himmel!' returned his companion, scrutinizing the sword-cut, 'if that's
your work on his head, you did it right well, my Pierson! He is very
neatly scored indeed. A clean stroke, manifestly!'

'But here when I left Milan! at Verona when I entered the North-west
gate there; and the first man I see as I come back is this very brute.
He dogs me everywhere! By the way, there may be two of them.'

Lieutenant Pierson leaned over his horse's neck, and looked narrowly
at the man Barto Rizzo. He himself was eyed as in retort, and with yet
greater intentness. At first Barto's hand was sweeping the air within
a finger's length of his forehead, like one who fought a giddiness for
steady sight. The mist upon his brain dispersing under the gaze of his
enemy, his eyeballs fixed, and he became a curious picture of passive
malice, his eyes seeming to say: 'It is enough for me to know your
features, and I know them.' Such a look from a civilian is exasperating:
it was scarcely to be endured from an Italian of the plebs.

'You appear to me to want more,' said the lieutenant audibly to himself;
and he repeated words to the same effect to his companion, in bad
German.

'Eh? You would promote him to another epaulette?' laughed Captain
Weisspriess. 'Come off. Orders are direct against it. And we're in
Milan--not like being in Verona! And my good fellow! remember your bet;
the dozen of iced Rudesheimer. I want to drink my share, and dream I'm
quartered in Mainz--the only place for an Austrian when he quits Vienna.
Come.'

'No; but if this is the villain who attacked me, and tore my coat from
my back,' cried Wilfrid, screwing in his saddle.

'And took your letter took your letter; a particular letter; we have
heard of it,' said Weisspriess.

The lieutenant exclaimed that he should overhaul and examine the man,
and see whether he thought fit to give him into custody. Weisspriess
laid hand on his bridle.

'Take my advice, and don't provoke a disturbance in the streets. The
truth is, you Englishmen and Irishmen get us a bad name among these
natives. If this is the man who unhorsed you and maltreated you, and
committed the rape of the letter, I'm afraid you won't get satisfaction
out of him, to judge by his look. I'm really afraid not. Try it if you
like. In any case, if you halt, I am compelled to quit your society,
which is sometimes infinitely diverting. Let me remind you that you bear
despatches. The other day they were verbal ones; you are now carrying
paper.'

'Are you anxious to teach me my duty, Captain Weisspriess?'

'If you don't know it. I said I would “remind you.” I can also teach
you, if you need it.'

'And I can pay you for the instruction, whenever you are disposed to
receive payment.'

'Settle your outstanding claims, my good Pierson!'

'When I have fought Jenna?'

'Oh! you're a Prussian--a Prussian!' Captain Weisspriess laughed. 'A
Prussian, I mean, in your gross way of blurting out everything. I've
marched and messed with Prussians--with oxen.'

'I am, as you are aware, an Englishman, Captain Weisspriess. I am due to
Lieutenant Jenna for the present. After that you or any one may command
me.'

'As you please,' said Weisspriess, drawing out one stream of his
moustache. 'In the meantime, thank me for luring you away from the
chances of a street row.'

Barto Rizzo was left behind, and they rode on to the Duomo. Glancing up
at its pinnacles, Weisspriess said:

'How splendidly Flatschmann's jagers would pick them off from there,
now, if the dogs were giving trouble in this part of the city!'

They entered upon a professional discussion of the ways and means of
dealing with a revolutionary movement in the streets of a city like
Milan, and passed on to the Piazza La Scala. Weisspriess stopped before
the Play-bills. 'To-morrow's the fifteenth of the month,' he said.
'Shall I tell you a secret, Pierson? I am to have a private peep at the
new prima donna this night. They say she's charming, and very pert.
“I do not interchange letters with Germans.” Benlomik sent her a neat
little note to the conservatorio--he hadn't seen her only heard of
her, and that was our patriotic reply. She wants taming. I believe I
am called upon for that duty. At least, my friend Antonio-Pericles, who
occasionally assists me with supplies, hints as much to me. You're
an engaged man, or, upon my honour, I wouldn't trust you; but between
ourselves, this Greek--and he's quite right--is trying to get her away
from the set of snuffy vagabonds who are prompting her for mischief, and
don't know how to treat her.'

While he was speaking Barto Rizzo pushed roughly between them, and with
a black brush painted the circle about Vittoria's name.

'Do you see that?' said Weisspriess.

'I see,' Wilfrid retorted, 'that you are ready to meddle with the
reputation of any woman who is likely to be talked about. Don't do it in
my presence.'

It was natural for Captain Weisspriess to express astonishment at this
outburst, and the accompanying quiver of Wilfrid's lip.

'Austrian military etiquette, Lieutenant Pierson,' he said, 'precludes
the suspicion that the officers of the Imperial army are subject
to dissension in public. We conduct these affairs upon a different
principle. But I'll tell you what. That fellow's behaviour may be
construed as a more than common stretch of incivility. I'll do you a
service. I'll arrest him, and then you can hear tidings of your precious
letter. We'll have his confession published.'

Weisspriess drew his sword, and commanded the troopers in attendance to
lay hands on Barto; but the troopers called, and the officer found that
they were surrounded. Weisspriess shrugged dismally. 'The brute must go,
I suppose,' he said. The situation was one of those which were every
now and then occurring in the Lombard towns and cities, when a chance
provocation created a riot that became a revolt or not, according to the
timidity of the ruling powers or the readiness of the disaffected. The
extent and evident regulation of the crowd operated as a warning to the
Imperial officers. Weisspriess sheathed his sword and shouted, 'Way,
there!' Way was made for him; but Wilfrid lingered to scrutinize the
man who, for an unaccountable reason, appeared to be his peculiar enemy.
Barto carelessly threaded the crowd, and Wilfrid, finding it useless to
get out after him, cried, 'Who is he? Tell me the name of that man?' The
question drew a great burst of laughter around him, and exclamations of
'Englishman! Englishman!' He turned where there was a clear way left for
him in the track of his brother officer.

Comments on the petty disturbance had been all the while passing at the
Caffe La Scala, where sat Agostino Balderini, with, Count Medole and
others, who, if the order for their arrest had been issued, were as safe
in that place as in their own homes. Their policy, indeed, was to show
themselves openly abroad. Agostino was enjoying the smoke of paper
cigarettes, with all prudent regard for the well-being of an inflammable
beard. Perceiving Wilfrid going by, he said, 'An Englishman! I continue
to hope much from his countrymen. I have no right to do so, only they
insist on it. They have promised, and more than once, to sail a fleet
to our assistance across the plains of Lombardy, and I believe they
will--probably in the watery epoch which is to follow Metternich. Behold
my Carlo approaching. The heart of that lad doth so boil the brain of
him, he can scarcely keep the lid on. What is it now? Speak, my son.'

Carlo Ammiani had to communicate that he had just seen a black circle
to Vittoria's name on two public playbills. His endeavour to ape a
deliberate gravity while he told the tale, roused Agostino's humouristic
ire.

'Round her name?' said Agostino.

'Yes; in every bill.'

'Meaning that she is suspected!'

'Meaning any damnable thing you like.'

'It's a device of the enemy.'

Agostino, glad of the pretext to recur to his habitual luxurious irony,
threw himself back, repeating 'It 's a device of the enemy. Calculate,
my son, that the enemy invariably knows all you intend to do: determine
simply to astonish him with what you do. Intentions have lungs,
Carlo, and depend on the circumambient air, which, if not designedly
treacherous, is communicative. Deeds, I need not remark, are a different
body. It has for many generations been our Italian error to imagine
a positive blood relationship--not to say maternity itself--existing
between intentions and deeds. Nothing of the sort! There is only the
intention of a link to unite them. You perceive? It's much to be famous
for fine intentions, so we won't complain. Indeed, it's not our business
to complain, but Posterity's; for fine intentions are really rich
possessions, but they don't leave grand legacies; that is all. They mean
to possess the future: they are only the voluptuous sons of the present.
It's my belief, Carlino, from observation, apprehension, and other gifts
of my senses, that our paternal government is not unacquainted with our
intention to sing a song in a certain opera. And it may have learnt
our clumsy method of enclosing names publicly, at the bidding of a
non-appointed prosecutor, so to, isolate or extinguish them. Who can
say? Oh, ay! Yes! the machinery that can so easily be made rickety is
to blame; we admit that; but if you will have a conspiracy like a Geneva
watch, you must expect any slight interference with the laws that
govern it to upset the mechanism altogether. Ah-a! look yonder, but
not hastily, my Carlo. Checco is nearing us, and he knows that he has
fellows after him. And if I guess right, he has a burden to deliver to
one of us.'

Checco came along at his usual pace, and it was quite evident that he
fancied himself under espionage. On two sides of the square a suspicious
figure threaded its way in the line of shade not far behind him. Checco
passed the cafe looking at nothing but the huge hands he rubbed over and
over. The manifest agents of the polizia were nearing when Checco ran
back, and began mouthing as in retort at something that had been spoken
from the cafe as he shot by. He made a gabbling appeal on either side,
and addressed the pair of apparent mouchards, in what, if intelligible,
should have been the language of earnest entreaty. At the first word
which the caffe was guilty of uttering, a fit of exasperation seized
him, and the exciteable creature plucked at his hat and sent it whirling
across the open-air tables right through the doorway. Then, with
a whine, he begged his followers to get his hat back for him. They
complied.

'We only called “Illustrissimo!”' said Agostino, as one of the men
returned from the interior of the caffe hat in hand.

'The Signori should have known better--it is an idiot,' the man replied.
He was a novice: in daring to rebuke he betrayed his office.

Checco snatched his hat from his attentive friend grinning, and was away
in a flash. Thereupon the caffe laughed, and laughed with an abashing
vehemence that disconcerted the spies. They wavered in their choice of
following Checco or not; one went a step forward, one pulled back; the
loiterer hurried to rejoin his comrade, who was now for a retrograde
movement, and standing together they swayed like two imperfectly jolly
fellows, or ballet bandits, each plucking at the other, until at last
the maddening laughter made them break, reciprocate cat-like hisses of
abuse, and escape as they best could--lamentable figures.

'It says well for Milan that the Tedeschi can scrape up nothing better
from the gutters than rascals the like of those for their service,'
quoth Agostino. 'Eh, Signor Conte?'

'That enclosure about La Vittoria's name on the bills is correct,' said
the person addressed, in a low tone. He turned and indicated one who
followed from the interior of the caffe.

'If Barto is to be trusted she is not safe,' the latter remarked. He
produced a paper that had been secreted in Checco's hat. Under the date
and the superscription of the Pope's Mouth, 'LA VITTORIA' stood out in
the ominous heavily-pencilled ring: the initials of Barto Rizzo were in
a corner. Agostino began smoothing his beard.

'He has discovered that she is not trustworthy,' said Count Medole,
a young man of a premature gravity and partial baldness, who spoke
habitually with a forefinger pressed flat on his long pointed chin.

'Do you mean to tell me, Count Medole, that you attach importance to a
communication of this sort?' said Carlo, forcing an amazement to conceal
his anger.

'I do, Count Ammiani,' returned the patrician conspirator.

'You really listen to a man you despise?'

'I do not despise him, my friend.'

'You cannot surely tell us that you allow such a man, on his sole
authority, to blacken the character of the signorina?'

'I believe that he has not.'

'Believe? trust him? Then we are all in his hands. What can you mean?
Come to the signorina herself instantly. Agostino, you now conduct
Count Medole to her, and save him from the shame of subscribing to the
monstrous calumny. I beg you to go with our Agostino, Count Medole. It
is time for you--I honour you for the part you have taken; but it is
time to act according to your own better judgement.'

Count Medole bowed.

'The filthy rat!' cried Ammiani, panting to let out his wrath.

'A serviceable dog,' Agostino remarked correctingly. 'Keep true to the
form of animal, Carlo. He has done good service in his time.'

'You listen to the man?' Carlo said, now thoroughly amazed.

'An indiscretion is possible to woman, my lad. She may have been
indiscreet in some way I am compelled to admit the existence of
possibilities.'

'Of all men, you, Agostino! You call her daughter, and profess to love
her.'

'You forget,' said Agostino sharply. 'The question concerns the country,
not the girl.' He added in an underbreath, 'I think you are professing
that you love her a little too strongly, and scarce give her much help
as an advocate. The matter must be looked into. If Barto shall be found
to have acted without just grounds, I am certain that Count Medole'--he
turned suavely to the nobleman--'will withdraw confidence from him;
and that will be equivalent to a rope's-end for Barto. We shall see him
to-night at your house?'

'He will be there,' Medole said.

'But the harm's done; the mischief's done! And what's to follow if you
shall choose to consider this vile idiot justified?' asked Ammiani.

'She sings, and there is no rising,' said Medole.

'She is detached from the patriotic battery, for the moment: it will be
better for her not to sing at all,' said Agostino. 'In fact, Barto has
merely given us warning that--and things look like it--the Fifteenth is
likely to be an Austrian feast-day. Your arm, my son. We will join you
to-night, my dear Count. Now, Carlo, I was observing, it appears to me
that the Austrians are not going to be surprised by us, and it affords
me exquisite comfort. Fellows prepared are never more than prepared
for one day and another day; and they are sure to be in a state of lax
preparation after a first and second disappointment. On the contrary,
fellows surprised'--Agostino had recovered his old smile again--'fellows
surprised may be expected to make use of the inspirations pertaining to
genius. Don't you see?'

'Oh, cruel! I am sick of you all!' Carlo exclaimed. 'Look at her; think
of her, with her pure dream of Italy and her noble devotion. And you
permit a doubt to be cast on her!'

'Now, is it not true that you have an idea of the country not being
worthy of her?' said Agostino, slyly. 'The Chief, I fancy, did not take
certain facts into his calculation when he pleaded that the conspiratrix
was the sum and completion of the conspirator. You will come to Medole's
to-night, Carlo. You need not be too sweet to him, but beware of
explosiveness. I, a Republican, am nevertheless a practical exponent
of the sacrifices necessary to unity. I accept the local leadership of
Medole--on whom I can never look without thinking of an unfeathered pie;
and I submit to be assisted by the man Barto Rizzo. Do thou likewise, my
son. Let your enamoured sensations follow that duty, and with a breezy
space between. A conspiracy is an epitome of humanity, with a boiling
power beneath it. You're no more than a bit of mechanism--happy if it
goes at all!'

Agostino said that he would pay a visit to Vittoria in the evening.
Ammiani had determined to hunt out Barto Rizzo and the heads of the
Clubs before he saw her. It was a relief to him to behold in the Piazza
the Englishman who had exchanged cards with him on the Motterone.
Captain Gambier advanced upon a ceremonious bow, saying frankly, in a
more colloquial French than he had employed at their first interview,
that he had to apologize for his conduct, and to request monsieur's
excuse. 'If,' he pursued, 'that lady is the person whom I knew formerly
in England as Mademoiselle Belloni, and is now known as Mademoiselle
Vittoria Campa, may I beg you to inform her that, according to what
I have heard, she is likely to be in some danger to-morrow?' What the
exact nature of the danger was, Captain Gambier could not say.

Ammiani replied: 'She is in need of all her friends,' and took the
pressure of the Englishman's hand, who would fair have asked more but
for the stately courtesy of the Italian's withdrawing salute. Ammiani
could no longer doubt that Vittoria's implication in the conspiracy was
known.




CHAPTER XI

LAURA PIAVENI

After dark on the same day antecedent to the outbreak, Vittoria, with
her faithful Beppo at her heels, left her mother to run and pass one
comforting hour in the society of the Signora Laura Piaveni and her
children.

There were two daughters of a parasitical Italian nobleman, of whom
one had married the patriot Giacomo Piaveni, and one an Austrian
diplomatist, the Commendatore Graf von Lenkenstein. Count Serabiglion

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