Carlo feared to provoke, revolted from the thought of slaying him. “Yes,

yes,” he interposed, “my wife is heart and soul in it. Go.”

Barto looked from him to her with the eyes of a dog that awaits an

order.

Victoria gathered her strength, and said: “I am not.”

“It is her answer!” Barto roared, and from deep dejection his whole

countenance radiated. “She says it--she might give the lie to a saint! I

was never mad. I saw the spot, and put my finger on it, and not a madman

can do that. My two years are my own. Mad now, for, see!

“I worship the creature. She is not heart and soul in it. She is not in

it at all. She is a little woman, a lovely thing, a toy, a cantatrice.

Joy to the big heart of Barto Rizzo! I am for Brescia!”

He flung his arm like a banner, and ran out.

Carlo laid his sword on a table. Vittoria's head was on his mother's

bosom.

The hour was too full of imminent grief for either of the three to

regard this scene as other than a gross intrusion ended.

“Why did you deny my words?” Carlo said coldly.

“I could not lie to make him wretched,” she replied in a low murmur.

“Do you know what that 'I am for Brescia' means? He goes to stir the

city before a soul is ready.”

“I warned you that I should speak the truth of myself to-night,

dearest.”

“You should discern between speaking truth to a madman, and to a man.”

Vittoria did not lift her eyes, and Carlo beckoned to Violetta, with

whom he left the room.

“He is angry,” Countess Ammiani murmured. “My child, you cannot

deal with men in a fever unless you learn to dissemble; and there is

exemption for doing it, both in plain sense, and in our religion. If I

could arrest him, I would speak boldly. It is, alas! vain to dream of

that; and it is therefore an unkindness to cause him irritation.

Carlo has given way to you by allowing you to be here when his friends

assemble. He knows your intention to speak. He has done more than would

have been permitted by my husband to me, though I too was well-beloved.”

Vittoria continued silent that her head might be cherished where it lay.

She was roused from a stupor by hearing new voices. Laura's lips came

pressing to her cheek. Colonel Corte, Agostino, Marco Sana, and Angelo

Guidascarpi, saluted her. Angelo she kissed.

“That lady should be abed and asleep,” Corte was heard to say.

The remark passed without notice. Angelo talked apart with Vittoria. He

had seen the dying of the woman whose hand had been checked in the act

of striking by the very passion of animal hatred which raised it. He

spoke of her affectionately, attesting to the fact that Barto Rizzo had

not prompted her guilt. Vittoria moaned at a short outline that he gave

of the last minutes between those two, in which her name was dreadfully

and fatally, incomprehensibly prominent.

All were waiting impatiently for Carlo's return.

When he appeared he informed his mother that the Countess d'Isorella

would remain in the house that night, and his mother passed out to her

abhorred guest, who, for the time at least, could not be doing further

mischief.

It was a meeting for the final disposition of things before the

outbreak. Carlo had begun to speak when Corte drew his attention to the

fact that ladies were present, at which Carlo put out his hand as if

introducing them, and went on speaking.

“Your wife is here,” said Corte.

“My wife and signora Piaveni,” Carlo rejoined. “I have consented to my

wife's particular wish to be present.”

“The signora Piaveni's opinions are known: your wife's are not.”

“Countess Alessandra shares mine,” said Laura, rather tremulously.

Countess Ammiani at the same time returned and took Vittoria's hand and

pressed it with force. Carlo looked at them both.

“I have to ask your excuses, gentlemen. My wife, my mother, and signora

Piaveni, have served the cause we worship sufficiently to claim a

right--I am sorry to use such phrases; you understand my meaning. Permit

them to remain. I have to tell you that Barto Rizzo has been here: he

has started for Brescia. I should have had to kill him to stop him--a

measure that I did not undertake.”

“Being your duty!” remarked Corte.

Agostino corrected him with a sarcasm.

“I cannot allow the presence of ladies to exclude a comment on manifest

indifference,” said Corte. “Pass on to the details, if you have any.”

“The details are these,” Carlo resumed, too proud to show a shade

of self-command; “my cousin Angelo leaves Milan before morning. You,

Colonel Corte, will be in Bergamo at noon to-morrow. Marco and Angelo

will await my coming in Brescia, where we shall find Giulio and the

rest. I join them at five on the following afternoon, and my arrival

signals the revolt. We have decided that the news from the king's army

is good.”

A perceptible shudder in Vittoria's frame at this concluding sentence

caught Corte's eye.

“Are you dissatisfied with that arrangement?” he addressed her boldly.

“I am, Colonel Corte,” she replied. So simple was the answering tone of

her voice that Corte had not a word.

“It is my husband who is going,” Vittoria spoke on steadily; “him I am

prepared to sacrifice, as I am myself. If he thinks it right to throw

himself into Brescia, nothing is left for me but to thank him for having

done me the honour to consult me. His will is firm. I trust to God

that he is wise. I look on him now as one of many brave men whose lives

belong to Italy, and if they all are misdirected and perish, we have no

more; we are lost. The king is on the Ticino; the Chief is in Rome. I

desire to entreat you to take counsel before you act in anticipation of

the king's fortune. I see that it is a crushed life in Lombardy. In Rome

there is one who can lead and govern. He has suffered and is calm.

He calls to you to strengthen his hands. My prayer to you is to take

counsel. I know the hour is late; but it is not too late for wisdom.

Forgive me if I am not speaking humbly. Brescia is but Brescia; Rome

is Italy. I have understood little of my country until these last days,

though I have both talked and sung of her glories. I know that a deep

duty binds you to Bergamo and to Brescia--poor Milan we must not think

of. You are not personally pledged to Rome: yet Rome may have the

greatest claims on you. The heart of our country is beginning to beat

there. Colonel Corte! signor Marco! my Agostino! my cousin Angelo! it is

not a woman asking for the safety of her husband, but one of the blood

of Italy who begs to offer you her voice, without seeking to disturb

your judgement.”

She ceased.

“Without seeking to disturb their judgement!” cried Laura. “Why not,

when the judgement is in error?”

To Laura's fiery temperament Vittoria's speech had been feebleness.

She was insensible to that which the men felt conveyed to them by the

absence of emotion in the language of a woman so sorrowfully placed.

“Wait,” she said, “wait for the news from Carlo Alberto, if you

determine to play at swords and guns in narrow streets.” She spoke long

and vehemently, using irony, coarse and fine, with the eloquence which

was her gift. In conclusion she apostrophized Colonel Corte as one who

had loved him might have done. He was indeed that figure of indomitable

strength to which her spirit, exhausted by intensity of passion, clung

more than to any other on earth, though she did not love him, scarcely

liked him.

Corte asked her curiously--for she had surprised and vexed his softer

side--why she distinguished him with such remarkable phrases only to

declare her contempt for him.

“It's the flag whipping the flag-pole,” murmured Agostino; and he now

spoke briefly in support of the expedition to Rome; or at least in

favour of delay until the King of Sardinia had gained a battle. While he

was speaking, Merthyr entered the room, and behind him a messenger who

brought word that Bergamo had risen.

The men drew hurriedly together, and Countess Ammiani, Vittoria and

Laura stood ready to leave them.

“You will give me, five minutes?” Vittoria whispered to her husband, and

he nodded.

“Merthyr,” she said, passing him, “can I have your word that you will

not go from me?”

Merthyr gave her his word after he had looked on her face.

“Send to me every two hours, that I may know you are near,” she added;

“do not fear waking me. Or, no, dear friend; why should I have any

concealment from you? Be not a moment absent, if you would not have me

fall to the ground a second time: follow me.”

Even as he hesitated, for he had urgent stuff to communicate to Carlo,

he could see a dreadful whiteness rising on her face, darkening the

circles of her eyes.

“It's life or death, my dearest, and I am bound to live,” she said. Her

voice sprang up from tears.

Merthyr turned and tried in vain to get a hearing among the excited,

voluble men. They shook his hand, patted his shoulder, and counselled

him to leave them. He obtained Carlo's promise that he would not quit

the house without granting him an interview; after which he passed out

to Vittoria, where Countess Ammiani and Laura sat weeping by the door.

CHAPTER XLIV

THE WIFE AND THE HUSBAND

When they were alone Merthyr said: “I cannot give many minutes, not much

time. I have to speak to your husband.”

She answered: “Give me many minutes--much time. All other speaking is

vain here.”

“It concerns his safety.”

“It will not save him.”

“But I have evidence that he is betrayed. His plans are known; a trap is

set for him. If he moves, he walks into a pit.”

“You would talk reason, Merthyr,” Vittoria sighed. “Talk it to me. I can

listen; I thirst for it. I beat at the bars of a cage all day. When I

saw you this afternoon, I looked on another life. It was too sudden,

and I swooned. That was my only show of weakness. Since then you are the

only strength I feel.”

“Have they all become Barto Rizzos?” Merthyr exclaimed.

“Beloved, I will open my mind to you,” said Vittoria. “I am cowardly,

and I thought I had such courage! Tonight a poor mad creature has been

here, who has oppressed me, I cannot say how long, with real fear--that

I only understand now that I know the little ground I had for it. I am

even pleased that one like Barto Rizzo should see me in a better light.

I find the thought smiling in my heart when every other thing is utterly

dark there. You have heard that Carlo goes to Brescia. When I was

married, I lost sight of Italy, and everything but happiness. I suffer

as I deserve for it now. I could have turned my husband from this black

path; I preferred to dream and sing. I would not see--it was my pride

that would not let me see his error. My cowardice would not let me wound

him with a single suggestion. You say that he is betrayed. Then he is

betrayed by the woman who has never been unintelligible to me. We were

in Turin surrounded by intrigues, and there I thanked her so much for

leaving me the days with my husband by Lake Orta that I did not seek to

open his eyes to her. We came to Milan, and here I have been thanking

her for the happy days in Turin. Carlo is no longer to blame if he will

not listen to me. I have helped to teach him that I am no better than

any of these Italian women whom he despises. I spoke to him as his wife

should do, at last. He feigned to think me jealous, and I too remember

the words of the reproach, as if they had a meaning. Ah, my friend!

I would say of nothing that it is impossible, except this task of

recovering lost ground with one who is young. Experience of trouble has

made me older than he. When he accused me of jealousy, I could mention

Countess d'Isorella's name no more. I confess to that. Yet I knew my

husband feigned. I knew that he could not conceive the idea of jealousy

existing in me, as little as I could imagine unfaithfulness in him. But

my lips would not take her name! Wretched cowardice cannot go farther.

I spoke of Rome. As often as I spoke, that name was enough to shake

me off: he had but to utter it, and I became dumb. He did it to obtain

peace; for no other cause. So, by degrees, I have learnt the fatal

truth. He has trusted her, for she is very skilful; distrusting her,

for she is treacherous. He has, therefore, believed excessively in his

ability to make use of her, and to counteract her baseness. I saw his

error from the first; and I went on dreaming and singing; and now this

night has come!”

Vittoria shadowed her eyes.

“I will go to him at once,” said Merthyr.

“Yes; I am relieved. Go, dear friend,” she sobbed; “you have given me

tears, as I hoped. You will not turn him; had it been possible, could I

have kept you from him so long? I know that you will not turn him from

his purpose, for I know what a weight it is that presses him forward in

that path. Do not imagine our love to be broken. He will convince you

that it is not. He has the nature of an angel. He permitted me to speak

before these men to-night--feeble thing that I am! It was a last effort.

I might as well have tried to push a rock.”

She rose at a noise of voices in the hall below.

“They are going, Merthyr. See him now. There may be help in heaven; if

one could think it! If help were given to this country--if help were

only visible! The want of it makes us all without faith.”

“Hush! you may hear good news from Carlo Alberto in a few hours,” said

Merthyr.

“Ask Laura; she has witnessed how he can be shattered,” Vittoria replied

bitterly.

Merthyr pressed her fingers. He was met by Carlo on the stairs.

“Quick!” Carlo said; “I have scarce a minute to spare. I have my adieux

to make, and the tears have set in already. First, a request: you

will promise to remain beside my wife; she will want more than her own

strength.”

Such a request, coming from an Italian husband, was so great a proof of

the noble character of his love and his knowledge of the woman he loved,

that Merthyr took him in his arms and kissed him.

“Get it over quickly, dear good fellow,” Carlo murmured; “you have

something to tell me. Whatever it is, it's air; but I'll listen.”

They passed into a vacant room. “You know you are betrayed,” Merthyr

began.

“Not exactly that,” said Carlo, humming carelessly.

“Positively and absolutely. The Countess d'Isorella has sold your

secrets.”

“I commend her to the profit she has made by it.”

“Do you play with your life?”

Carlo was about to answer in the tone he had assumed for the interview.

He checked the laugh on his lips.

“She must have some regard for my life, such as it's worth, since, to

tell you the truth, she is in the house now, and came here to give me

fair warning.”

“Then, you trust her.”

“I? Not a single woman in the world!--that is, for a conspiracy.”

It was an utterly fatuous piece of speech. Merthyr allowed it to slip,

and studied him to see where he was vulnerable.

“She is in the house, you say. Will you cause her to come before me?”

“Curiously,” said Carlo, “I kept her for some purpose of the sort. Will

I? and have a scandal now? Oh! no. Let her sleep.”

Whether he spoke from noble-mindedness or indifference, Merthyr could

not guess.

“I have a message from your friend Luciano. He sends you his love, in

case he should be shot the first, and says that when Lombardy is free he

hopes you will not forget old comrades who are in Rome.”

“Forget him! I would to God I could sit and talk of him for hours.

Luciano! Luciano! He has no wife.”

Carlo spoke on hoarsely. “Tell me what authority you have for charging

Countess d'Isorella with... with whatever it may be.”

“A conversation between Countess Anna of Lenkenstein and a Major Nagen,

in the Duchess of Graatli's house, was overheard by our Beppo.

They spoke German. The rascal had a German sweetheart with him. She

imprisoned him for some trespass, and had come stealing in to rescue

him, when those two entered the room. Countess Anna detailed to Nagen

the course of your recent plotting. She named the hour this morning when

you are to start for Brescia. She stated what force you have, what arms

you expect; she named you all.”

“Nagen--Nagen,” Carlo repeated; “the man's unknown to me.”

“It's sufficient that he is an Austrian officer.”

“Quite. She hates me, and she has reason, for she's aware that I mean to

fight her lover, and choose my time. The blood of my friends is on that

man's head.”

“I will finish what I have to say,” pursued Merthyr. “When Beppo had

related as much as he could make out from his sweetheart's translation,

I went straight to the duchess. She is an Austrian, and a good and

reasonable woman. She informed me that a letter addressed by Countess

Anna to Countess d'Isorella fell into her hands this night. She burnt it

unopened. I leave it to you to consider whether you have been betrayed

and who has betrayed you. The secret was bought. Beppo himself caught

the words, 'from a mercenary Italian.' The duchess tells me that

Countess Anna is in the habit of alluding to Countess d'Isorella in

those terms.”

Carlo stretched his arms like a man who cannot hide the yawning fit.

“I promised my wife five minutes, though we have had the worst of the

parting over. Perhaps you will wait for me; I may have a word to say.”

He was absent for little more than the space named. When he returned, he

was careful to hide his face. He locked the door, and leading Merthyr to

an inner room, laid his watch on the table, and said: “Now, friend,

you will see that I have nothing to shrink from, for I am going to do

execution upon myself, and before him whom I would, above all other

men, have think well of me. My wife supposes that I am pledged to this

Brescian business because I am insanely patriotic. If I might join

Luciano tomorrow I would shout like a boy. I would be content to serve

as the lowest in the ranks, if I might be with you all under the Chief.

Rome crowns him, and Brescia is my bloody ditch, and it is deserved!

When I was a little younger--I am a boy still, no doubt--I had the

honour to be distinguished by a handsome woman; and when I grew a little

older, I discovered by chance that she had wit. The lady is the Countess

Violetta d'Isorella. It is a grief to me to know that she is sordid:

it hurts my vanity the more. Perhaps: you begin to perceive that vanity

governs me. The signora Laura has not expressed her opinion on this

subject with any reserve, but to Violetta belongs the merit of having

seen it without waiting for the signs. First--it is a small matter, but

you are English--let me assure you that my wife has had no rival. I have

taunted her with jealousy when I knew that it was neither in her nature

to feel it, nor in mine to give reason for it. No man who has a spark of

his Maker in him could be unfaithful to such a woman. When Lombardy was

crushed, we were in the dust. I fancy we none of us knew how miserably

we had fallen--we, as men. The purest--I dare say, the bravest--marched

to Rome. God bless my Luciano there! But I, sir, I, my friend, I,

Merthyr, I said proudly that I would not abandon a beaten country: and I

was admired for my devotion. The dear old poet, Agostino, praised me.

It stopped his epigrams--during a certain time, at least. Colonel Corte

admired me. Marco Sana, Giulio Bandinelli admired me. Vast numbers

admired me. I need not add that I admired myself. I plunged into

intrigues with princes, and priests, and republicans. A clever woman was

at my elbow. In the midst of all this, my marriage: I had seven weeks of

peace; and then I saw what I was. You feel that you are tired, when you

want to go another way and you feel that you have been mad when you want

to undo your work. But I could not break the chains I had wrought, for

I was a chief of followers. The men had come from exile, or they

had refused to join the Roman enterprise:--they, in fact, had bound

themselves to me; and that means, I was irrevocably bound to them. I had

an insult to wipe out: I refrained from doing it, sincerely, I may tell

you, on the ground that this admired life of mine was precious. I will

heap no more clumsy irony on it: I can pity it. Do you see now how I

stand? I know that I cannot rely on the king's luck or on the skill of

his generals, or on the power of his army, or on the spirit in Lombardy:

neither on men nor on angels. But I cannot draw back. I have set going

a machine that's merciless. From the day it began working, every moment

has added to its force. Do not judge me by your English eyes: other

lands, other habits; other habits, other thoughts. And besides, if

honour said nothing, simple humanity would preserve me from leaving my

band to perish like a flock of sheep.”

He uttered this with a profound conviction of his quality as leader,

that escaped the lurid play of self-inspection which characterized what

he had previously spoken, and served singularly in bearing witness to

the truth of his charge against himself.

“Useless!” he said, waving his hand at anticipated remonstrances.

“Look with the eyes of my country; not with your own, my friend. I am

disgraced if I do not go out. My friends are disgraced if I do not head

them in. Brescia--sacrificed!--murdered!--how can I say what? Can I live

under disgrace or remorse? The king stakes on his army; I on the king.

Whether he fights and wins, or fights and loses, I go out. I have

promised my men--promised them success, I believe!--God forgive me! Did

you ever see a fated man before? None had plotted against me. I have

woven my own web, and that's the fatal thing. I have a wife, the

sweetest woman of her time. Goodnight to her! our parting is over.”

He glanced at his watch. “Perhaps she will be at the door below. Her

heart beats like mine just now. You wish to say that you think me

betrayed, and therefore I may draw back? Did you not hear that Bergamo

has risen? The Brescians are up too by this time. Gallant Brescians!

they never belie the proverb in their honour; and to die among them

would be sweet if I had all my manhood about me. You would have me

making a scene with Violetta.”

“Set the woman face to face with me!” cried Merthyr, sighting a gleam of

hope.

Carlo smiled. “Can she bear my burden though she be ten times guilty?

Let her sleep. I have her here harmless for the night. The Brescians are

up:--that's an hour that has struck, and there's no calling it to move

a step in the rear. Brescia under the big Eastern hill which throws

a cloak on it at sunrise! Brescia is always the eagle that looks over

Lombardy! And Bergamo! you know the terraces of Bergamo. Aren't they

like a morning sky? Dying there is not death; it's flying into the dawn.

You Romans envy us. Come, confess it; you envy us. You have no Alps,

no crimson hills, nothing but old walls to look on while you fight.

Farewell, Merthyr Powys. I hear my servant's foot outside. My horse is

awaiting me saddled, a mile from the city. Perhaps I shall see my wife

again at the door below, or in heaven. Addio! Kiss Luciano for me. Tell

him that I knew myself as well as he did, before the end came. Enrico,

Emilio, and the others--tell them I love them. I doubt if there will

ever be but a ghost of me to fight beside them in Rome. And there's no

honour, Merthyr, in a ghost's fighting, because he's shotproof; so I

won't say what the valiant disembodied 'I' may do by-and-by.”

He held his hands out, with the light soft smile of one who asks

forgiveness for flippant speech, and concluded firmly: “I have talked

enough, and you are the man of sense I thought you; for to give me

advice is childish when no power on earth could make me follow it.

Addio! Kiss me.”

They embraced. Merthyr said no more than that he would place messengers

on the road to Brescia to carry news of the king's army. His voice was

thick, and when Carlo laughed at him, his sensations strangely reversed

their situations.

There were two cloaked figures at different points in the descent of

the stairs. These rose severally at Carlo's approach, took him to their

bosoms, and kissed him in silence. They were his mother and Laura. A

third crouched by the door of the courtyard, which was his wife.

Merthyr kept aloof until the heavy door rolled a long dull sound.

Vittoria's head was shawled over. She stood where her husband had left

her, groping for him with one hand, that closed tremblingly hard on

Merthyr when he touched it. Not a word was uttered in the house.

CHAPTER XLV

SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END

Until daylight Merthyr sat by himself, trying to realize the progressive

steps of the destiny which seemed like a visible hand upon Count

Ammiani, that he might know it to be nothing else than Carlo's work. He

sat in darkness in the room where Carlo had spoken, thinking of him

as living and dead. The brilliant life in Carlo protested against a

possible fatal tendency in his acts so irrevocable as to plunge him to

destruction when his head was clear, his blood cool, and a choice lay

open to him. That brilliant young life, that fine face, the tones of

Carlo's voice, swept about Merthyr, accusing him of stupid fatalism.

Grief stopped his answer to the charge; but in his wise mind he knew

Carlo to have surveyed things justly; and that the Fates are within

us. Those which are the forces of the outer world are as shadows to

the power we have created within us. He felt this because it was his

gathered wisdom. Human compassion, and love for the unhappy youth,

crushed it in his heart, and he marvelled how he could have been

paralyzed when he had a chance of interceding. Can a man stay a torrent?

But a noble and fair young life in peril will not allow our philosophy

to liken it to things of nature. The downward course of a fall that

takes many waters till it rushes irresistibly is not the course of any

life. Yet it is true that our destiny is of our own weaving. Carlo's

involvements cast him into extreme peril, almost certain death, unless

he abjured his honour, dearer than a life made precious by love. Merthyr

saw that it was not vanity, but honour; for Carlo stood pledged to lead

a forlorn enterprise, the ripeness of his own scheming. In the imminent

hour Carlo had recognized his position as Merthyr with the wisdom of

years looked on it. That was what had paralyzed the older man, though

he could not subsequently trace the cause. Thinking of the beauty of

the youth, husband of the woman who was to his soul utterly an angel,

Merthyr sat in the anguish of self-accusation, believing that some

remonstrance, some inspired word, might have turned him, and half

dreading to sound his own heart, as if an evil knowledge of his nature

haunted it.

He rose up at last with a cry. The door opened, and Giacinta, Vittoria's

maid, appeared, bearing a lamp. She had been sitting outside, waiting

to hear him stir before she intruded. He touched her cheek kindly, and

thought that one could do little better than die, if need were, in the

service of such a people. She said that her mistress was kneeling. She

wished to make coffee for him, and Merthyr let her do it, knowing the

comfort there is to a woman in the ministering occupation of her hands.

It was soon daylight. Beppo had not come back to the house.

“No one has left the house?” Merthyr asked.

“Not since--” she answered convulsively.

“The Countess d'Isorella is here?”

“Yes, signore.”

“Asleep?” he put the question mournfully, in remembrance of Carlo's “Let

her sleep!”

“Yes, signore; like the first night after confession.”

“She resides, I think, in the Corso Venezia. When she awakens, let her

know that I request to have the honour of conducting her.”

“Yes, signore. Her carriage is still at the gates. The countess's horses

are accustomed to stand.”

Merthyr knew this for a hint against his leaving, as well as against the

lady's character.

“Let your mistress be assured that I shall on no account be long absent

at any time.”

“Signore, I shall do so,” said Giacinta.

She brought him word soon after, that Countess d'Isorella was stirring.

Merthyr met Violetta on the stairs.

“Can it be true?” she accosted him first.

“Count Ammiani has left for Brescia,” he replied.

“In spite of my warning?”

Merthyr gave space for her to pass into the room. She appeared

undecided, saying that she had a dismal apprehension of her not having

dismissed her coachman overnight.

“In spite of my warning,” she murmured again, “he has really gone?

Surely I cannot have slept more than three hours.”

“It was Count Ammiani's wish that you should enjoy your full sleep

undisturbed in his house,” said Merthyr, “As regards your warning to

him, he has left Milan perfectly convinced of the gravity of a warning

that comes from you.”

Violetta shrugged lightly. “Then all we have to do is to pray for the

success of Carlo Alberto.”

“Oh! pardon me, countess,” Merthyr rejoined, “prayers may be useful, but

you at least have something to do besides.”

His eyes caught hers firmly as they were letting a wild look of

interrogation fall on him, and he continued with perfect courtesy, “You

will accompany me to see Countess Anna of Lenkenstein. You have great

influence, madame. It is not Count Ammiani's request; for, as I informed

you, it was his wish that you should enjoy your repose. The request is

mine, because his life is dear to me. Nagen, I think, is the name of the

Austrian officer who has started for Brescia.”

She had in self-defence to express surprise while he spoke, which

compelled her to meet his mastering sight and submit to a struggle

of vision sufficient to show him that he had hit a sort of guilty

consciousness. Otherwise she was not discomposed, and with marvellous

sagacity she accepted the forbearance he assumed, not affecting

innocence to challenge it, as silly criminals always do when they are

exposed, but answering quite in the tone of innocence, and so throwing

the burden by an appearance of mutual consent on some unnamed third

person.

“Certainly; let us go to Countess Anna of Lenkenstein, if you think fit.

I have to rely on your judgement. I quite abjure my own. If I have to

plead for anything, I am going before a woman, remember.”

“I do not forget it,” said Merthyr.

“The expedition to Brescia may be unfortunate,” she resumed hurriedly;

“I wish it had not been undertaken. At any rate, it rescues Count

Ammiani from an expedition to Rome, and his slavish devotion to that

priest-hating man whom he calls, or called, his Chief. At Brescia he is

not outraging the head of our religion. That is a gain.”

“A gain for him in the next world?” said Merthyr. “I believe that

Countess Anna of Lenkenstein is also a fervent Catholic; is she not?”

“I trust so.”

“On behalf of her peace of mind, I trust so, too. In that case, she also

must be a sound sleeper.”

“We shall have to awaken her. What excuse--what am I to say to her?”

“I beg you to wait for the occasion, Countess d'Isorella. The words will

come.”

Violetta bit her lip. She had consented to this extraordinary step in

an amazement. As she contemplated it now, it seemed worse than a partial

confession and an appeal to his generosity. She broke out in pity for

her horses, in dread of her coachman, declaring that it was impossible

for her to give him the order to drive her anywhere but home.

“With your permission, countess, I will undertake to give him the

order,” said Merthyr.

“But have you no compassion, signor Powys? and you are an Englishman! I

thought that Englishmen were excessively compassionate with horses.”

“They have been known to kill them in the service of their friends,

nevertheless.”

“Well!”--Violetta had recourse to the expression of her shoulders--“and

I am really to see Countess Anna?”

“In my presence.”

“Oh! that cannot be. Pardon me; it is impossible. She will decline the

scene. I say it with the utmost sincerity: I know that she will refuse.”

“Then, countess,” Merthyr's face grew hard, “if I am not to be in your

company to prompt you, allow me to instruct you beforehand.”

Violetta looked at him eagerly, as one looks for tidings, with an

involuntary beseeching quiver of the strained eyelids.

“No irony!” she said, fearing horribly that he was about to throw off

the mask of irony.

This desperate effort of her wits at the crisis succeeded.

Merthyr, not knowing what design he had, hopeless of any definite end in

tormenting the woman, and never having it in his mind merely to punish,

was diverted by the exclamation to speak ironically. “You can tell

Countess Anna that it is only her temporal sovereign who is attacked,

and that therefore--” he could not continue.

“Some affection?” he murmured, in intense grief.

His manly forbearance touched her whose moral wit was too blunt to

apprehend the contempt in it.

“Much affection--much!” Violetta exclaimed. “I have a deep affection for

Count Ammiani; an old friendship. Believe me! believe me! I came here

last night to save him. Anything on earth that I can do, I will do--on

my honour; and do not smile at that--I have never pledged it without

fulfilling the oath. I will not sleep while I can aid in preserving him.

He shall know that I am not the base person he has conceived me to be.

You, signor Powys, are not a man to paint all women black that are a

little less than celestial--are you? I am told it is a trick with your

countrymen; and they have a poet who knew us! I entreat you to

confide in me. I am at present quite unaware that Count Ammiani runs

particular--I mean personal danger. He is in danger, of course; everyone

can see it. But, on my honour--and never in my life have I spoken so

earnestly, my friends would hardly recognize me--I declare to you on my

faith as a Christian lady, I am ignorant of any plot against him. I

can take a Cross and kiss it, like a peasant, and swear to you by the

Madonna that I know nothing of it.”

She corrected her ardour, half-exulting in finding herself carried so

far and so swimmingly on a tide of truth, half wondering whether the

flowering beauty of her face in excitement had struck his sensibility.

He was cold and speculative.

“Ah!” she said, “if I were to ask my compatriots to put faith in a

woman's pure friendship for a man, I should know the answer; but you,

signor Powys, who have shown us that a man is capable of the purest

friendship for a woman, should believe me.”

He led her down to the gates, where her coachman sat muffled in a

three-quarter sleep. The word was given to drive to her own house;

rejoiced by which she called his attention deploringly to the condition

of her horses, requesting him to say whether he could imagine them the

best English, and confessing with regret, that she killed three sets

a year--loved them well, notwithstanding. Merthyr saw enough of her to

feel that she was one of the weak creatures who are strong through our

greater weakness; and, either by intuition or quick wit, too lively

and too subtle to be caught by simple suspicion. She even divined that

reflection might tell him she had evaded him by an artifice--a piece

of gross cajolery; and said, laughing: “Concerning friendship, I could

offer it to a boy, like Carlo Ammiani; not to you, signor Powys. I know

that I must check a youth, and I am on my guard. I should be eternally

tormented to discover whether your armour was proof.”

“I dare say that a lady who had those torments would soon be able to

make them mine,” said Merthyr.

“You could not pay a fairer compliment to some one else,” she remarked.

In truth, the candid personal avowal seemed to her to hold up Vittoria's

sacred honour in a crystal, and the more she thought of it, the more she

respected him, for his shrewd intelligence, if not for his sincerity;

but on the whole she fancied him a loyal friend, not solely a clever

maker of phrases; and she was pleased with herself for thinking such a

matter possible, in spite of her education.

“I do most solemnly hope that you may not have to sustain Countess

Alessandra under any affliction whatsoever,” she said at parting.

Violetta had escaped an exposure--a rank and naked accusation of

her character and deeds. She feared nothing but that, being quite

indifferent to opinion; a woman who would not have thought it

preternaturally sad to have to walk as a penitent in the streets, with

the provision of a very thick veil to cover her. She had escaped, but

the moment she felt herself free, she was surprised by a sharp twinge of

remorse. She summoned her maid to undress her, and smelt her favourite

perfume, and lay in her bed, to complete her period of rest, closing

her eyes there with a child's faith in pillows. Flying lights and

blood-blotches rushed within a span of her forehead. She met this

symptom promptly with a medical receipt; yet she had no sleep; nor

would coffee give her sleep. She shrank from opium as deleterious to the

constitution, and her mind settled on music as the remedy.

Some time after her craving for it had commenced, an Austrian foot

regiment, marching to the drum, passed under her windows. The fife is a

merry instrument; fife and drum colour the images of battle gaily; but

the dull ringing Austrian step-drum, beating unaccompanied, strikes

the mind with the real nature of battles, as the salt smell of powder

strikes it, and more in horror, more as a child's imagination realizes

bloodshed, where the scene is a rolling heaven, black and red on

all sides, with pitiable men moving up to the mouth of butchery, the

insufferable flashes, the dark illumination of red, red of black, like a

vision of the shadows Life and Death in a shadow-fight over the dear men

still living. Sensitive minds may be excited by a small stimulant to see

such pictures. This regimental drum is like a song of the flat-headed

savage in man. It has no rise or fall, but leads to the bloody business

with an unvarying note, and a savage's dance in the middle of the

rhythm. Violetta listened to it until her heart quickened with alarm

lest she should be going to have a fever. She thought of Carlo Ammiani,

and of the name of Nagen; she had seen him at the Lenkensteins. Her

instant supposition was that Anna had perhaps paid heavily for the

secret of Carlo's movements an purpose to place Major Nagen on the

Brescian high-road to capture him. Capture meant a long imprisonment, if

not execution. Partly for the sake of getting peace of mind--for she was

shocked by her temporary inability to command repose--but with some hope

of convincing Carlo that she strove to be of use to him, she sent for

the spy Luigi, and at a cost of two hundred and twenty Austrian florins,

obtained his promise upon oath to follow Count Ammiani into Brescia, if

necessary, and deliver to him a letter she had written, wherein Nagen's

name was mentioned, and Carlo was advised to avoid personal risks; the

letter hinted that he might have incurred a private enmity, and he had

better keep among his friends. She knew the writing of this letter to

be the foolishest thing she had ever done. Two hundred and twenty

florins--the man originally stipulated to have three hundred--was a

large sum to pay for postage. However, sacrifices must now and then be

made for friendship, and for sleep. When she had paid half the money,

her mind was relieved, and she had the slumber which preserves beauty.

Luigi was to be paid the other half on his return. “He may never

return,” she thought, while graciously dismissing him. The deduction by

mental arithmetic of the two hundred and twenty, or the one hundred and

ten florins, from the large amount Countess Anna was bound to pay her

in turn, annoyed her, though she knew it was a trifle. For this lady,

Milan, Turin, and Paris sighed deeply.

When he had left Violetta at her house in the Corso, Merthyr walked

briskly for exercise, knowing that he would have need of his health and

strength. He wanted a sight of Alps to wash out the image of the woman

from his mind, and passed the old Marshal's habitation fronting the

Gardens, wishing that he stood in the field against the fine old

warrior, for whom he had a liking. Near the walls he discovered Beppo

sitting pensively with his head between his two fists. Beppo had not

seen Count Ammiani, but he had seen Barto Rizzo, and pointing to the

walls, said that Barto had dropped down there. He had met him hurrying

in the Corso Francesco. Barto took him to the house of Sarpo, the

bookseller, who possessed a small printing-press. Beppo described

vividly, with his usual vivacity of illustration, the stupefaction of

the man at the apparition of his tormentor, whom he thought fast in

prison; and how Barto had compelled him to print a proclamation to the

Piedmontese, Lombards, and Venetians, setting forth that a battle had

been fought South of the Ticino, and that Carlo Alberto was advancing

on Milan, signed with the name of the Piedmontese Pole in command of the

king's army. A second, framed as an order of the day, spoke of victory

and the planting of the green, white and red banner on the Adige, and

forward to the Isonzo.

“I can hear nothing of Carlo Alberto's victory,” Beppo said; “no one has

heard of it. Barto told us how the battle was fought, and the name of

the young lieutenant who discovered the enemy's flank march, and got the

artillery down on him, and pounded him so that--signore, it's amazing!

I'm ready to cry, and laugh, and howl!--fifteen thousand men capitulated

in a heap!”

“Don't you know you've been listening to a madman?” said Merthyr,

irritated, and thoroughly angered to see Beppo's opposition to that

view.

“Signore, Barto described the whole battle. It began at five o'clock in

the morning.”

“When it was dark!”

“Yes; when it was dark. He said so. And we sent up rockets, and caught

the enemy coming on, and the cavalry of Alessandria fell upon two

batteries of field guns and carried them off, and Colonel Romboni was

shot in his back, and cries he, 'Best give up the ghost if you're hit in

the rear. Evviva l'Italia!'”

“A Piedmontese colonel, you fool! he would have shouted 'Viva Carlo

Alberto!'” said Merthyr, now critically disgusted with the tale, and

refusing to hear more. Two hours later, he despatched Beppo to Carlo

in Brescia, warning him that for some insane purpose these two

proclamations had been printed by Barto Rizzo, and that they were false.

It was early on the morning of a second day, before sunrise, when

Vittoria sent for Merthyr to conduct her to the cathedral. “There has

been a battle,” she said. Her lips hardly joined to frame the syllables

in speech. Merthyr refrained from asking where she had heard of the

battle. As soon as the Duomo doors were open, he led her in and left her

standing shrinking under the great vault with her neck fearfully drawn

on her shoulders, as one sees birds under thunder. He thought that she

was losing courage. Choosing to go out on the steps rather than look

on her, he was struck by the sight of two horsemen, who proved to be

Austrian officers, rattling at racing speed past the Duomo up the Corso.

The sight of them made it seem possible that a battle had been fought.

As soon as he was free, Merthyr went to the Duchess of Graatli, from

whom he had the news of Novara. The officers he had seen were Prince

Radocky and Lieutenant Wilfrid Pierson, the old Marshal's emissaries of

victory. They had made a bet on the bloody field about reaching Milan

first, and the duchess affected to be full of the humour of this bet

in order to conceal her exultation. The Lenkensteins called on her; the

Countess of Lenkenstein, Anna, and Lena; and they were less considerate,

and drew their joy openly from the source of his misery--a dreadful

house for Merthyr to remain in; but he hoped to see Wilfrid, having

heard the duchess rally Lena concerning the deeds of the white umbrella,

which, Lena said, was pierced with balls, and had been preserved for

her. “The dear foolish fellow insisted on marching right into the midst

of the enemy with his absurd white umbrella; and wherever there was

danger the men were seen following it. Prince Radocky told me the

whole army was laughing. How he escaped death was a miracle!” She spoke

unaffectedly of her admiration for the owner, and as Wilfrid came in she

gave him brilliant eyes. He shook Merthyr's hand without looking at

him. The ladies would talk of nothing but the battle, so he went up to

Merthyr, and under pretext of an eager desire for English news, drew him

away.

“Her husband was not there? not at Novara, I mean?” he said.

“He's at Brescia,” said Merthyr.

“Well, thank goodness he didn't stand in those ranks!”

Wilfrid murmured, puffing thoughtfully over the picture they presented

to his memory.

Merthyr then tried to hint to him that he had a sort of dull suspicion

of Carlo's being in personal danger, but of what kind he could not say.

He mentioned Weisspriess by name; and Nagen; and Countess Anna. Wilfrid

said, “I'll find out if there's anything, only don't be fancying it. The

man's in a bad hole at Brescia. Weisspriess, I believe, is at Verona.

He's an honourable fellow. The utmost he would do would be to demand

a duel; and I'm sure he's heartily sick of that work. Besides, he and

Countess Anna have quarrelled. Meet me;--by the way, you and I mustn't

be seen meeting, I suppose. The duchess is neutral ground. Come here

to-night. And don't talk of me, but say that a friend asks how she is,

and hopes--the best things you can say for me. I must go up to their

confounded chatter again. Tell her there's no fear, none whatever.

You all hate us, naturally; but you know that Austrian officers are

gentlemen. Don't speak my name to her just yet. Unless, of course, she

should happen to allude to me, which is unlikely. I had a dismal idea

that her husband was at Novara.”

The tender-hearted duchess sent a message to Vittoria, bidding her not

to forget that she had promised her at Meran to 'love her always.'

“And tell her,” she said to Merthyr, “that I do not think I shall

have my rooms open for the concert to-morrow night. I prefer to let

Antonio-Pericles go mad. She will not surely consider that she is bound

by her promise to him? He drags poor Irma from place to place to make

sure the miserable child is not plotting to destroy his concert, as that

man Sarpo did. Irma is half dead, and hasn't the courage to offend him.

She declares she depends upon him for her English reputation. She has

already caught a violent cold, and her sneezing is frightful. I have

never seen so abject a creature. I have no compassion at the sight of

her.”

That night Merthyr heard from Wilfrid that a plot against Carlo Ammiani

did exist. He repeated things he had heard pass between Countess

d'Isorella and Irma in the chamber of Pericles before the late battle.

Modestly confessing that he was 'for some reasons' in high favour with

Countess Lena, he added that after a long struggle he had brought her

to confess that her sister had sworn to have Countess Alessandra Ammiani

begging at her feet.

By mutual consent they went to consult the duchess. She repelled the

notion of Austrian women conspiring. “An Austrian noble lady--do you

think it possible that she would act secretly to serve a private hatred?

Surely I may ask you, for my sake, to think better of us?”

Merthyr showed her an opening to his ground by suggesting that Anna's

antipathy to Victoria might spring more from a patriotic than a private

source.

“Oh! I will certainly make inquiries, if only to save Anna's reputation

with her enemies,” the duchess answered rather proudly.

It would have been a Novara to Pericles if Vittoria had refused to sing.

He held the pecuniarily-embarrassed duchess sufficiently in his power to

command a concert at her house; his argument to those who pressed him

to spare Vittoria in a season of grief running seriously, with visible

contempt of their intellects, thus: “A great voice is an ocean. You

cannot drain it with forty dozen opera-hats. It is something found--an

addition to the wealth of this life. Shall we not enjoy what we find?

You do not wear out a picture by looking at it; likewise you do not wear

out a voice by listening to it. A bird has wings;--here is a voice.

Why were they given? I should say, to go into the air. Ah; but not if

grandmother is ill. What is a grandmother to the wings and the voice? If

to sing would kill,--yes, then let the puny thing be silent! But Sandra

Belloni has a soul that has not a husband--except her Art. Her body is

husbanded; but her soul is above her body. You would treat it as below.

Art is her soul's husband! Besides, I have her promise. She is a girl

who will go up to a loaded gun's muzzle if she gives her word. And

besides, her husband may be shot to-morrow. So, all she sings now is

clear gain.”

Vittoria sent word to him that she would sing.

In the meantime a change had come upon Countess Anna. Weisspriess, her

hero, appeared at her brother's house, fresh from the field of Novara,

whither he had hurried from Verona on a bare pretext, that was a

breach of military discipline requiring friendly interposition in

high quarters. Unable to obtain an audience with Count Lenkenstein,

he remained in the hall, hoping for things which he affected to care

nothing for; and so it chanced that he saw Lena, who was mindful that

her sister had suffered much from passive jealousy when Wilfrid returned

from the glorious field, and led him to Anna, that she also might

rejoice in a hero. Weisspriess did not refrain from declaring on the way

that he would rather charge against a battery. Some time after, Anna lay

in Lena's arms, sobbing out one of the wildest confessions ever made by

woman:--she adored Weisspriess; she hated Nagen; but was miserably bound

to the man she hated. “Oh! now I know what love is.” She repeated this

with transparent enjoyment of the opposing sensations by whose shock the

knowledge was revealed to her.

“How can you be bound to Major Nagan?” asked Lena.

“Oh! why? except that I have been possessed by devils.”

Anna moaned. “Living among these Italians has distempered my blood.” She

exclaimed that she was lost.

“In what way can you be lost?” said Lena.

“I have squandered more than half that I possess. I am almost a beggar.

I am no longer the wealthy Countess Anna. I am much poorer than anyone

of us.”

“But Major Weisspriess is a man of honour, and if he loves you--”

“Yes; he loves me! he loves me! or would he come to me after I have

sent him against a dozen swords? But he is poor; he must, must marry a

wealthy woman. I used to hate him because I thought he had his eye on

money. I love him for it now. He deserves wealth; he is a matchless

hero. He is more than the first swordsman of our army; he is a knightly

man. Oh my soul Johann!” She very soon fell to raving. Lena was implored

by her to give her hand to Weisspriess in reward for his heroism--“For

you are rich,” Anna said; “you will not have to go to him feeling that

you have made him face death a dozen times for your sake, and that you

thank him and reward him by being a whimpering beggar in his arms.

Do, dearest! Will you? Will you, to please me, marry Johann? He is not

unworthy of you.” And more of this hysterical hypocrisy, which brought

on fits of weeping. “I have lived among these savages till I have ceased

to be human--forgotten everything but my religion,” she said. “I wanted

Weisspriess to show them that they dared not stand up against a man of

us, and to tame the snarling curs. He did. He is brave. He did as much

as a man could do, but I was unappeasable. They seem to have bitten me

till I had a devouring hunger to humiliate them. Lena, will you believe

that I have no hate for Carlo Ammiani or the woman he has married? None!

and yet, what have I done!” Anna smote her forehead. “They are nothing

but little dots on a field for me. I don't care whether they live or

die. It's like a thing done in sleep.”

“I want to know what you have done,” said Lena caressingly.

“You at least will try to reward our truest hero, and make up to him for

your sister's unkindness, will you not?” Anna replied with a cajolery

wonderfully like a sincere expression of her wishes. “He will be a good

husband.. He has proved it by having been so faithful a--a lover. So you

may be sure of him. And when he is yours, do not let him fight again,

Lena, for I have a sickening presentiment that his next duel is his

last.”

“Tell me,” Lena entreated her, “pray tell me what horrible thing you

have done to prevent your marrying him.”

“With their pride and their laughter,” Anna made answer; “the fools!

were they to sting us perpetually and not suffer for it? That woman, the

Countess Alessandra, as she's now called--have you forgotten that she

helped our Paul's assassin to escape? was she not eternally plotting

against Austria? And I say that I love Austria. I love my country; I

plot for my country. She and her husband plot, and I plot to thwart

them. I have ruined myself in doing it. Oh, my heart! why has it

commenced beating again? Why did Weisspriess come here? He offended me.

He refused to do my orders, and left me empty-handed, and if he suffers

too,” Anna relieved a hard look with a smile of melancholy, “I hope he

will not; I cannot say more.”

“And I'm to console him if he does?” said Lena.

“At least, I shall be out of the way,” said Anna. “I have still money

enough to make me welcome in a convent.”

“I am to marry him?” Lena persisted, and half induced Anna to act a

feeble part, composed of sobs and kisses and full confession of her

plight. Anna broke from her in time to leave what she had stated of

herself vague and self-justificatory, so that she kept her pride, and

could forgive, as she was ready to do even so far as to ask forgiveness

in turn, when with her awakened enamoured heart she heard Vittoria sing

at the concert of Pericles. Countess Alessandra's divine gift, which she

would not withhold, though in a misery of apprehension; her grave eyes,

which none could accuse of coldness, though they showed no emotion;

her simple noble manner that seemed to lift her up among the forces

threatening her; these expressions of a superior soul moved Anna under

the influence of the incomparable voice to pass over envious contrasts,

and feel the voice and the nature were one in that bosom. Could it be

the same as the accursed woman who had stood before her at Meran? She

could hardly frame the question, but she had the thought sufficiently

firmly to save her dignity; she was affected by very strong emotion

when Vittoria's singing ended, and nothing but the revival of the

recollection of her old contempt preserved her from an impetuous desire

to take the singer by the hand and have all clear between them; for they

were now of equal rank to tolerating eyes. “But she has no religious

warmth!” Anna reflected with a glow of satisfaction. The concert was

broken up by Laura Piaveni. She said out loud that the presence of Major

Weisspriess was intolerable to the Countess Alessandra. It happened

that Weisspriess entered the room while Laura sat studying the effect

produced by her countrywoman's voice on the thick eyelids of Austrian

Anna; and Laura, seeing their enemy ready to weep in acknowledgment of

their power, scorned the power which could never win freedom, and broke

up the sitting, citing the offence of the presence of Weisspriess for

a pretext. The incident threw Anna back upon her old vindictiveness.

It caused an unpleasant commotion in the duchess's saloon. Count

Serabiglione was present, and ran round to Weisspriess, apologizing for

his daughter's behaviour. “Do you think I can't deal with your women as

well as your men, you ass?” said Weisspriess, enraged by the scandal of

the scene. He was overheard by Count Karl Lenkenstein, who took him to

task sharply for his rough speech; but Anna supported her lover, and

they joined hands publicly. Anna went home prostrated with despair.

“What conscience is in me that I should wish one of my Kaiser's officers

killed?” she cried enigmatically to Lena. “But I must have freedom. Oh!

to be free. I am chained to my enemy, and God blesses that woman. He

makes her weep, but he blesses her, for her body is free, and mine,--the

thought of mine sets flames creeping up my limbs as if I were tied to

the stake. Losing a husband you love--what is that to taking a husband

you hate?” Still Lena could get no plain confession from her, for Anna

clung to self-justification, and felt it abandoning her, and her soul

fluttering in a black gulf when she opened her month to disburden

herself.

There came tidings of the bombardment of Brescia one of the historic

deeds of infamy. Many officers of the Imperial army perceived the shame

which it cast upon their colours, even in those intemperate hours,

and Karl Lenkenstein assumed the liberty of private friendship to go

complaining to the old Marshal, who was too true a soldier to condemn

a soldier in action, however strong his disapproval of proceedings.

The liberty assumed by Karl was excessive; he spoke out in the midst of

General officers as if his views were shared by them and the Marshal;

and his error was soon corrected; one after another reproached

him, until the Marshal, pitying his condition, sent him into his

writing-closet, where he lectured the youth on military discipline.

It chanced that there followed between them a question upon what the

General in command at Brescia would do with his prisoners; and hearing

that they were subject to the rigours of a court-martial, and if

adjudged guilty, would forthwith summarily be shot, Karl ventured to ask

grace for Vittoria's husband. He succeeded finally in obtaining his kind

old Chief's promise that Count Ammiani should be tried in Milan, and as

the bearer of a paper to that effect, he called on his sisters to get

them or Wilfrid to convey word to Vittoria of her husband's probable

safety. He found Anna in a swoon, and Lena and the duchess bending

over her. The duchess's chasseur Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz had been

returning from Moran, when on the Brescian high-road he met the spy

Luigi, and acting promptly under the idea that Luigi was always a

pestilential conductor of detestable correspondence, he attacked him,

overthrew him, and ransacked him, and bore the fruit of his sagacious

exertions to his mistress in Milan; it was Violetta d'Isorella's letter

to Carlo Ammiani. “I have read it,” the duchess said; “contrary to any

habits when letters are not addressed to me. I bring it open to your

sister Anna. She catches sight of one or two names and falls down in the

state in which you see her.”

“Leave her to me,” said Karl.

He succeeded in extracting from Anna hints of the fact that she had

paid a large sum of her own money to Countess d'Isorella for secrets

connected with the Bergamasc and Brescian rising. “We were under a

mutual oath to be silent, but if one has broken it the other cannot; so

I confess it to you, dearest good brother. I did this for my country at

my personal sacrifice.”

Karl believed that he had a sister magnificent in soul. She was glad to

have deluded him, but she could not endure his praises, which painted to

her imagination all that she might have been if she had not dashed her

patriotism with the low cravings of vengeance, making herself like some

abhorrent mediaeval grotesque, composed of eagle and reptile. She was

most eager in entreating him to save Count Ammiani's life. Carlo, she

said, was their enemy, but he had been their friend, and she declared

with singular earnestness that she should never again sleep or hold up

her head, if he were slain or captured.

“My Anna is justified by me in everything she has done,” Karl said to

the duchess.

“In that case,” the duchess replied, “I have only to differ with her to

feel your sword's point at my breast.”

“I should certainly challenge the man who doubted her,” said Karl.

The duchess laughed with a scornful melancholy.

On the steps of the door where his horse stood saddled, he met Wilfrid,

and from this promised brother-in-law received matter for the challenge.

Wilfrid excitedly accused Anna of the guilt of a conspiracy to cause

the destruction of Count Ammiani. In the heat of his admiration for his

sister, Karl struck him on the cheek with his glove, and called him a

name by which he had passed during the days of his disgrace, signifying

one who plays with two parties. Lena's maid heard them arrange to meet

within an hour, and she having been a witness of the altercation, ran to

her mistress in advance of Wilfrid, and so worked on Lena's terrors on

behalf of her betrothed and her brother, that Lena, dropped at Anna's

feet telling her all that she had gathered and guessed in verification

of Wilfrid's charge, and imploring her to confess the truth. Anna,

though she saw her concealment pierced, could not voluntarily forego

her brother's expressed admiration of her, and clung to the tatters of

secresy. After a brief horrid hesitation, she chose to face Wilfrid.

This interview began with lively recriminations, and was resulting

in nothing--for Anna refused to be shaken by his statement that the

Countess d'Isorella had betrayed her, and perceived that she was

listening to suspicions only--when, to give his accusation force,

Wilfrid said that Brescia had surrendered and that Count Ammiani had

escaped.

“And I thank God for it!” Anna exclaimed, and with straight frowning

eyes demanded the refutation of her sincerity.

“Count Ammiani and his men have five hours' grace ahead of Major Nagen

and half a regiment,” said Wilfrid.

At this she gasped; she had risen her breath to deny or defy, and hung

on the top of it without a voice.

“Tell us--say, but do say--confess that you know Nagen to be a name of

mischief,” Lena prayed her.

“I will say anything to prevent my brother from running into danger,”

Anna rejoined.

“She is most foully accused by one whom we permitted to aspire to be of

our own family,” said Karl.

“Yet you, Karl, have always been the first to declare her revengeful,”

Lena turned to him.

“Help, Karl, help me,” said Anna.

“Yes!” cried her sister; “there you stand, and ask for help, meanest of

women! Do you think these men are not in earnest? Karl is to help you,

and you will not speak a word to save him from a grave before night, or

me from a lover all of blood.”

“Am I to be the sacrifice?” said Anna.

“Whatever you call it, Wilfrid has spoken truth of you, and to none but

members of our family; and he had a right to say it, and you are bound

now to acknowledge it.”

“I acknowledge that I love and serve my country, Lena.”

“Not with a pure heart: you can't forgive. Insult or a wrong makes a

madwoman of you. Confess, Anna! You know well that you can't kneel to

a priest's ear, for you've stopped your conscience. You have pledged

yourself to misery to satisfy a spite, and you have not the courage to

ask for--” Lena broke her speech like one whose wits have been kindled.

“Yes, Karl,” she resumed; “Anna begged you to help her. You will. Take

her aside and save her from being miserable forever. You do mean to

fight my Wilfrid?”

“I am certainly determined to bring him to repentance leaving him the

option of the way,” said Karl.

Lena took her sullen sister by the arm.

“Anna, will you let these two men go--to slaughter? Look at them; they

are both our brothers. One is dearer than a brother to me, and, oh God!

I have known what it is to half-lose him. You to lose a lover and

have to go bound by a wretched oath to be the wife of a detestable

short-sighted husband! Oh, what an abominable folly!”

This epithet, 'short-sighted,' curiously forced in by Lena, was like a

shock of the very image of Nagen's needle features thrust against Anna's

eyes; the spasm of revulsion in her frame was too quick for her habitual

self-control.

At that juncture Weisspriess opened the door, and Anna's eyes met his.

“You don't spare me,” she murmured to Lena.

Her voice trembled, and Wilfrid bent his head near her, pressing her

hand, and said, “Not only I, but Countess Alessandra Ammiani exonerates

you from blame. As she loves her country, you love yours. My words

to Karl were an exaggeration of what I know and think. Only tell me

this;--if Nagen captures Count Ammiani, how is he likely to deal with

him?”

“How can I inform you?” Anna replied coldly; but she reflected in a

fire of terror. She had given Nagen the prompting of a hundred angry

exclamations in the days of her fever of hatred; she had nevertheless

forgotten their parting words; that is, she had forgotten her mood when

he started for Brescia, and the nature of the last instructions she had

given him. Revolting from the thought of execution being done upon Count

Ammiani, as one quickly springing out of fever dreams, all her white

face went into hard little lines, like the withered snow which

wears away in frost. “Yes,” she said; and again, “Yes,” to something

Weisspriess whispered in her ear, she knew not clearly what. Weisspriess

told Wilfrid that he would wait below. As he quitted the room, the

duchess entered, and went up to Anna. “My good soul,” she said, “you

have, I trust, listened to Major Weisspriess. Oh, Anna! you wanted

revenge. Now take it, as becomes a high-born woman; and let your enemy

come to your feet, and don't spurn her when she is there. Must I inform

you that I have been to Countess d'Isorella myself with a man who can

compel her to speak? But Anna von Lenkenstein is not base like that

Italian. Let them think of you as they will, I believe you to have a

great heart. I am sure you will not allow personal sentiment to sully

your devotion to our country. Show them that our Austrian faces can be

bright; and meet her whom you call your enemy; you cannot fly. You

must see her, or you betray yourself. The poor creature's husband is in

danger of capture or death.”

While the duchess's stern under-breath ran on hurriedly, convincing Anna

that she had, with no further warning, to fall back upon her uttermost

strength--the name of Countess Alessandra Ammiani was called at the

door. Instinctively the others left a path between Vittoria and Anna. It

was one of the moments when the adoption of a decisive course says more

in vindication of conduct than long speeches. Anna felt that she was

on her trial. For the first time since she had looked on this woman she

noticed the soft splendour of Vittoria's eyes, and the harmony of her

whole figure; nor was the black dress of protesting Italian mourning

any longer offensive in her sight, but on a sudden pitiful, for Anna

thought: “It may at this very hour be for her husband, and she not

knowing it.” And with that she had a vision under her eyelids of Nagen

like a shadowy devil in pursuit of men flying, and striking herself and

Vittoria worse than dead in one blow levelled at Carlo Ammiani. A sense

of supernatural horror chilled her blood when she considered again,

facing her enemy, that their mutual happiness was by her own act

involved in the fate of one life. She stepped farther than the half-way

to greet her visitor, whose hands she took. Before a word was uttered

between them, she turned to her brother, and with a clear voice said:

“Karl, the Countess Alessandra's husband, our old, friend Carlo Ammiani,

may need succour in his flight. Try to cross it; or better, get among

those who are pursuing him; and don't delay one minute. You understand

me.”

Count Karl bowed his head, bitterly humbled.

Anna's eyes seemed to interrogate Vittoria, “Can I do, more?” but her

own heart answered her.

Inveterate when following up her passion for vengeance, she was

fanatical in responding to the suggestions of remorse.

“Stay; I will despatch Major Weisspriess in my own name,” she said.

“He is a trusty messenger, and he knows those mountains. Whoever is the

officer broken for aiding Count Ammiani's escape, he shall be rewarded

by me to the best of my ability. Countess Alessandra, I have anticipated

your petition; I hope you may not have to reproach me. Remember that my

country was in pieces when you and I declared war. You will not suffer

without my suffering tenfold. Perhaps some day you will do me the favour

to sing to me, when there is no chance of interruption. At present it is

cruel to detain you.”

Vittoria said simply: “I thank you, Countess Anna.”

She was led out by Count Karl to where Merthyr awaited her. All wondered

at the briefness of a scene that had unexpectedly brought the crisis

to many emotions and passions, as the broken waters of the sea beat

together and make here or there the wave which is topmost. Anna's grand

initiative hung in their memories like the throbbing of a pulse, so

hotly their sensations swarmed about it, and so intensely it embraced

and led what all were desiring. The duchess kissed Anna, saying:

“That is a noble heart to which you have become reconciled. Though you

should never be friends, as I am with one of them, you will esteem her.

Do not suppose her to be cold. She is the mother of an unborn little

one, and for that little one's sake she follows out every duty; she

checks every passion in her bosom. She will spare no sacrifice to save

her husband, but she has brought her mind to look at the worst, for fear

that a shock should destroy her motherly guard.”

“Really, duchess,” Anna replied, “these are things for married women to

hear;” and she provoked some contempt of her conventional delicacy, at

the same time that in her imagination the image of Vittoria struggling

to preserve this burden of motherhood against a tragic mischance,

completely humiliated and overwhelmed her, as if nature had also come to

add to her mortifications.

“I am ready to confess everything I have done, and to be known for what

I am,” she said.

“Confess no more than is necessary, but do everything you can; that's

wisest,” returned the duchess.

“Ah; you mean that you have nothing to learn.” Anna shuddered.

“I mean that you are likely to run into the other extreme of

disfavouring yourself just now, my child. And,” continued the duchess,

“you have behaved so splendidly that I won't think ill of you.”

Before the day darkened, Wilfrid obtained, through Prince Radocky's

influence, an order addressed to Major Nagen for the surrender of

prisoners into his hands. He and Count Karl started for the Val Camonica

on the chance of intercepting the pursuit. These were not much wiser

than their guesses and their apprehensions made them; but Weisspriess

started on the like errand after an interview with Anna, and he had

drawn sufficient intelligence out of sobs, and broken sentences, and

torture of her spirit, to understand that if Count Ammiani fell alive or

dead into Nagen's hands, Nagen by Anna's scrupulous oath, had a claim on

her person and her fortune: and he knew Nagen to be a gambler. As he

was now by promotion of service Nagen's superior officer, and a near

relative of the Brescian commandant, who would be induced to justify his

steps, his object was to reach and arbitrarily place himself over Nagen,

as if upon a special mission, and to get the lead of the expedition. For

that purpose he struck somewhat higher above the Swiss borders than

Karl and Wilfrid, and gained a district in the mountains above the

vale, perfectly familiar to him. Obeying directions forwarded to her

by Wilfrid, Vittoria left Milan for the Val Camonica no later than the

evening; Laura was with her in the carriage; Merthyr took horse after

them as soon as he had succeeded in persuading Countess Ammiani to

pardon her daughter's last act of wilfulness, and believe that, during

the agitation of unnumbered doubts, she ran less peril in the wilds

where her husband fled, than in her home.

“I will trust to her idolatrously, as you do,” Countess Ammiani said;

“and perhaps she has already proved to me that I may.”

Merthyr saw Agostino while riding out of Milan, and was seen by him;

but the old man walked onward, looking moodily on the stones, and merely

waved his hand behind.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE LAST

There is hard winter overhead in the mountains when Italian Spring

walks the mountain-sides with flowers, and hangs deep valley-walls with

flowers half fruit; the sources of the rivers above are set about with

fangs of ice, while the full flat stream runs to a rose of sunlight.

High among the mists and snows were the fugitives of Brescia, and

those who for love or pity struggled to save them wandered through the

blooming vales, sometimes hearing that they had crossed the frontier

into freedom, and as often that they were scattered low in death and

captivity. Austria here, Switzerland yonder, and but one depth between

to bound across and win calm breathing. But mountain might call to

mountain, peak shine to peak; a girdle of steel drove the hunted men

back to frosty heights and clouds, the shifting bosom of snows and

lightnings. They saw nothing of hands stretched out to succour. They saw

a sun that did not warm them, a home of exile inaccessible, crags like

an earth gone to skeleton in hungry air; and below, the land of

their birth, beautiful, and sown everywhere for them with torture and

captivity, or death, the sweetest. Fifteen men numbered the escape from

Brescia. They fought their way twice through passes of the mountains,

and might easily, in their first dash Northward from the South-facing

hills, have crossed to the Valtelline and Engadine, but that in their

insanity of anguish they meditated another blow, and were readier to

march into the plains with the tricolour than to follow any course of

flight. When the sun was no longer in their blood they thought of reason

and of rest; they voted the expedition to Switzerland, that so they

should get round to Rome, and descended from the crags of the Tonale,

under which they were drawn to an ambush, suffering three of their party

killed, and each man bloody with wounds. The mountain befriended them,

and gave them safety, as truth is given by a bitter friend. Among icy

crags and mists, where the touch of life grows dull as the nail of a

fore-finger, the features of the mountain were stamped on them, and with

hunger they lost pride, and with solitude laughter; with endless fleeing

they lost the aim of flight; some became desperate, a few craven.

Companionship was broken before they parted in three bodies, commanded

severally by Colonel Corte, Carlo Ammiani, and Barto Rizzo. Corte

reached the plains, masked by the devotion of Carlo's band, who lured

the soldiery to a point and drew a chase, while Corte passed the

line and pushed on for Switzerland. Carlo told off his cousin Angelo

Guidascarpi in the list of those following Corte; but when he fled up

to the snows again, he beheld Angelo spectral as the vapour on a jut

of rock awaiting him. Barto Rizzo had chosen his own way, none knew

whither. Carlo, Angelo, Marco Sana, and a sharply-wounded Brescian lad,

conceived the scheme of traversing the South Tyrol mountain-range toward

Friuli, whence Venice, the still-breathing republic, might possibly be

gained. They carried the boy in turn till his arms drooped long down,

and when they knew the soul was out of him they buried him in snow, and

thought him happy. It was then that Marco Sana took his death for an

omen, and decided them to turn their heads once more for Switzerland;

telling them that the boy, whom he last had carried, uttered “Rome” with

the flying breath. Angelo said that Sana would get to Rome; and Carlo,

smiling on Angelo, said they were to die twins though they had been born

only cousins. The language they had fallen upon was mystical, scarce

intelligible to other than themselves. On a clear morning, with the

Swiss peaks in sight, they were condemned by want of food to quit their

fastness for the valley.

Vittoria read the faces of the mornings as human creatures base tried

to gather the sum of their destinies off changing surfaces, fair not

meaning fair, nor black black, but either the mask upon the secret

of God's terrible will; and to learn it and submit, was the spiritual

burden of her motherhood, that the child leaping with her heart

might live. Not to hope blindly, in the exceeding anxiousness of her

passionate love, nor blindly to fear; not to bet her soul fly out among

the twisting chances; not to sap her great maternal duty by affecting

false stoical serenity:--to nurse her soul's strength, and suckle her

womanly weakness with the tsars which are poison--when repressed; to

be at peace with a disastrous world for the sake of the dependent life

unborn; lay such pure efforts she clung to God. Soft dreams of sacred

nuptial tenderness, tragic images, wild pity, were like phantoms

encircling her, plucking at her as she went, lest they were beneath her

feet, and she kept them from lodging between her breasts. The thought

that her husband, though he should have perished, was not a life lost

if their child lived, sustained her powerfully. It seemed to whisper at

times almost as it were Carlo's ghost breathing in her ears: “On thee!”

On her the further duty devolved; and she trod down hope, lest it should

build her up and bring a shock to surprise her fortitude; she put back

alarm.

The mountains and the valleys scarce had names for her understanding;

they were but a scene where the will of her Maker was at work. Rarely

has a soul been so subjected to its own force. She certainly had the

image of God in her mind.

Yet when her ayes lingered on any mountain gorge, the fate of her

husband sang within it a strange chant, ending in a key that rang

sounding through all her being, and seemed to question heaven. This

music framed itself; it was still when she looked at the shrouded

mountain-tops. A shadow meting sunlight on the long green slopes aroused

it, and it hummed above the tumbling hasty foam, and penetrated hanging

depths of foliage, sad-hued rock-clefts, dark green ravines; it became

convulsed where the mountain threw forward in a rushing upward line

against the sky, there to be severed at the head by cloud. It was silent

among the vines.

Most painfully did human voices affect her when she had this music;

speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing, and touch distressed her:

an edge of purple flame would then unfold the vision of things to

her eyes. She had lost memory; and if by hazard unawares one idea was

projected by some sudden tumult of her enslaved emotions beyond known

and visible circumstances, her intelligence darkened with am oppressive

dread like that of zealots of the guilt of impiety.

Thus destitute, her eye took innumerable pictures sharp as on a

brass-plate: torrents, goat-tracks winding up red earth, rocks veiled

with water, cottage and children, strings of villagers mounting to the

church, one woman kneeling before a wayside cross, her basket at

her back, and her child gazing idly by; perched hamlets, rolling

pasture-fields, the vast mountain lines. She asked all that she saw,

“Does he live?” but the life was out of everything, and these shows

told of no life, neither of joy nor of grief. She could only distantly

connect the appearance of the white-coated soldiery with the source of

her trouble. They were no more than figures on a screen that hid the

flashing of the sword which renders dumb. She had charity for one who

was footsore and sat cherishing his ankle by a village spring, and she

fed him, and not until he was far behind, thought that he might have

seen the white face of her husband.

Accurate tidings could not be obtained, though the whole course of the

vale was full of stories of escapes, conflicts, and captures. Merthyr

learnt positively that some fugitives had passed the cordon. He came

across Wilfrid and Count Karl, who both verified it in the most sanguine

manner. They knew, however, that Major Nagen continued in the mountains.

Riding by a bend of the road, Merthyr beheld a man playing among

children, with one hand and his head down apparently for concealment at

his approach. It proved to be Beppo. The man believed that Count Ammiani

had fled to Switzerland. Barto Rizzo, he said, was in the mountains

still, and Beppo invoked damnation on him, as the author of those lying

proclamations which had ruined Brescia. He had got out of the city later

than the others and was seeking to evade the outposts, that he might

join his master--“that is, my captain, for I have only one master;” he

corrected the slip of his tongue appealingly to Merthyr. His left hand

was being continually plucked at by the children while he talked, and

after Merthyr had dispersed them with a shower of small coin, he showed

the hand, saying, glad of eye, that it had taken a sword-cut intended

for Count Ammiani. Merthyr sent him back to mount the carriage,

enjoining him severely not to speak.

When Carlo and his companions descended from the mountains, they entered

a village where there was an inn recognized by Angelo as the abode of

Jacopo Cruchi. He there revived Carlo's animosity toward Weisspriess

by telling the tale of the passage to Meran, and his good reasons for

determining to keep guard over the Countess Alessandra all the way.

Subsequently Angelo went to Jacopo for food. This he procured, but he

was compelled to leave the man behind, and unpaid. It was dark when he

left the inn; he had some difficulty in evading a flock of whitecoats,

and his retreat from the village was still on the Austrian side.

Somewhat about midnight Merthyr reached the inn, heralding the carriage.

As Jacopo caught sight of Vittoria's face, he fell with his shoulders

straightened against the wall, and cried out loudly that he had betrayed

no one, and mentioned Major Weisspriess by name as having held the point

of his sword at him and extracted nothing better than a wave of the

hand and a lie; in other words, that the fugitives had retired to the

Tyrolese mountains, and that he had shammed ignorance of who they were.

Merthyr read at a glance that Jacopo had the large swallow and calm

digestion for bribes, and getting the fellow alone he laid money in

view, out of which, by doubling the sum to make Jacopo correct his first

statement, and then by threatening to withdraw it altogether, he gained

knowledge of the fact that Angelo Guidascarpi had recently visited the

inn, and had started from it South-eastward, and that Major Weisspriess

was following on his track. He wrote a line of strong entreaty to

Weisspriess, lest that officer should perchance relapse into anger

at the taunts of prisoners abhorring him with the hatred of Carlo and

Angelo. At the same time he gave Beppo a considerable supply of money,

and then sent him off, armed as far as possible to speed Count Ammiani

safe across the borders, if a fugitive; or if a prisoner, to ensure the

best which could be hoped for him from an adversary become generous.

That evening Vittoria lay with her head on Laura's lap, and the pearly

little crescent of her ear in moonlight by the window. So fair and young

and still she looked that Merthyr feared for her, and thought of sending

her back to Countess Ammiani.

Her first question with the lifting of her eyelids was if he had ceased

to trust to her courage.

“No,” said Merthyr; “there are bounds to human strength; that is all.”

She answered: “There would be to mine--if I had not more than human

strength beside me. I bow my head, dearest; it is that. I feel that I

cannot break down as long as I know what is passing. Does my husband

live?”

“Yes, he lives,” said Merthyr; and she gave him her hand, and went to

her bed.

He learnt from Laura that when Beppo mounted the carriage in silence, a

fit of ungovernable wild trembling had come on her, broken at intervals

by a cry that something was concealed. Laura could give no advice;

she looked on Merthyr and Vittoria as two that had an incomprehensible

knowledge of the power of one another's natures, and the fiery creature

remained passive in perplexity of minds as soft an attendant as a

suffering woman could have:

Merthyr did not sleep, and in the morning Vittoria said to him, “You

want to be active, my friend. Go, and we will wait for you here. I know

that I am never deceived by you, and when I see you I know that the

truth speaks and bids me be worthy of it Go up there,” she pointed with

shut eyes at the mountains; “leave me to pray for greater strength. I am

among Italians at this inn; and shall spend money here; the poor people

love it.” She smiled a little, showing a glimpse of her old charitable

humour.

Merthyr counselled Laura that in case of evil tidings during his absence

she should reject her feminine ideas of expediency, and believe that she

was speaking to a brave soul firmly rooted in the wisdom of heaven.

“Tell her?--she will die,” said Laura, shuddering.

“Get tears from her,” Merthyr rejoined; “but hide nothing from her for

a single instant; keep her in daylight. For God's sake, keep her in

daylight.”

“It's too sharp a task for me.” She repeated that she was incapable of

it.

“Ah,” said he, “look at your Italy, how she weeps! and she has cause.

She would die in her grief, if she had no faith for what is to come. I

dare say it is not, save in the hearts of one or two, a conscious faith,

but it's real divine strength; and Alessandra Ammiani has it. Do as I

bid you. I return in two days.”

Without understanding him, Laura promised that she would do her utmost

to obey, and he left her muttering to herself as if she were schooling

her lips to speak reluctant words. He started for the mountains with

gladdened limbs, taking a guide, who gave his name as Lorenzo, and

talked of having been 'out' in the previous year. “I am a patriot,

signore! and not only in opposition to my beast of a wife, I assure you:

a downright patriot, I mean.” Merthyr was tempted to discharge him at

first, but controlled his English antipathy to babblers, and discovered

him to be a serviceable fellow. Toward nightfall they heard shots up

a rock-strewn combe of the lower slopes; desultory shots indicating

rifle-firing at long range. Darkness made them seek shelter in a

pine-hut; starting from which at dawn, Lorenzo ran beating about like a

dog over the place where the shots had sounded on the foregoing day; he

found a stone spotted with blood. Not far from the stone lay a military

glove that bore brown-crimson finger-ends. They were striking off to

a dairy-but for fresh milk, when out of a crevice of rock overhung

by shrubs a man's voice called, and Merthyr climbing up from perch to

perch, saw Marco Sana lying at half length, shot through hand and

leg. From him Merthyr learnt that Carlo and Angelo had fled higher up;

yesterday they had been attacked by coming who tried to lure there to

surrender by coming forward at the head of his men and offering safety,

and “other gabble,” said Marco. He offered a fair shot at his heart,

too, while he stood below a rock that Marco pointed at gloomily as a

hope gone for ever; but Carlo would not allow advantage to be taken of

even the treacherous simulation of chivalry, and only permitted firing

after he had returned to his men. “I was hit here and here,” said Marco,

touching his wounds, as men can hardly avoid doing when speaking of the

fresh wound. Merthyr got him on his feet, put money in his pocket, and

led him off the big stones painfully. “They give no quarter,” Marco

assured him, and reasoned that it must be so, for they had not taken

him prisoner, though they saw him fall, and ran by or in view of him in

pursuit of Carlo. By this Merthyr was convinced that Weisspriess

meant well. He left his guide in charge of Marco to help him into the

Engadine. Greatly to his astonishment, Lorenzo tossed the back of his

hand at the offer of money. “There shall be this difference between me

and my wife,” he remarked; “and besides, gracious signore, serving my

countrymen for nothing, that's for love, and the Tedeschi can't punish

me for it, so it's one way of cheating them, the wolves!” Merthyr shook

his hand and said, “Instead of my servant, be my friend;” and Lorenzo

made no feeble mouth, but answered, “Signore, it is much to my honour,”

and so they went different ways.

Left to himself Merthyr set step vigorously upward. Information from

herdsmen told him that he was an hour off the foot of one of the passes.

He begged them to tell any hunted men who might come within hail that a

friend ran seeking them. Farther up, while thinking of the fine nature

of that Lorenzo, and the many men like him who could not by the very

existence of nobility in their bosoms suffer their country to go through

another generation of servitude, his heart bounded immensely, for he

heard a shout and his name, and he beheld two figures on a rock near the

gorge where the mountain opened to its heights. But they were not Carlo

and Angelo. They were Wilfrid and Count Karl, the latter of whom had

discerned him through a telescope. They had good news to revive him,

however: good at least in the main. Nagen had captured Carlo and Angelo,

they believed; but they had left Weisspriess near on Nagen's detachment,

and they furnished sound military reasons to show why, if Weisspriess

favoured the escape, they should not be present. They supposed that they

were not half-a-mile from the scene in the pass where Nagen was being

forcibly deposed from his authority: Merthyr borrowed Count Karl's

glass, and went as they directed him round a bluff of the descending

hills, that faced the vale, much like a blown and beaten sea-cliff.

Wilfrid and Karl were so certain of Count Ammiani's safety, that their

only thought was to get under good cover before nightfall, and

haply into good quarters, where the three proper requirements of the

soldier-meat, wine, and tobacco--might be furnished to them. After an

imperative caution that they should not present themselves before the

Countess Alessandra, Merthyr sped quickly over the broken ground. How

gaily the two young men cheered to him as he hurried on! He met a sort

of pedlar turning the bluntfaced mountain-spur, and this man said, “Yes,

sure enough, prisoners had been taken,” and he was not aware of harm

having been done to them; he fancied there was a quarrel between two

captains. His plan being always to avoid the military, he had slunk

round and away from them as fast as might be. An Austrian common

soldier, a good-humoured German, distressed by a fall that had hurt

his knee-cap, sat within the gorge, which was very wide at the mouth.

Merthyr questioned him, and he, while mending one of his gathered

cigar-ends, pointed to a meadow near the beaten track, some distance up

the rocks. Whitecoats stood thick on it. Merthyr lifted his telescope

and perceived an eager air about the men, though they stood ranged in

careless order. He began to mount forthwith, but amazed by a sudden

ringing of shot, he stopped, asking himself in horror whether it could

be an execution. The shots and the noise increased, until the confusion

of a positive mellay reigned above. The fall of the meadow swept to

a bold crag right over the pathway, and with a projection that seen

sideways made a vulture's head and beak of it. There rolled a corpse

down the precipitous wave of green grass on to the crag, where it

lodged, face to the sky; sword dangled from swordknot at one wrist,

heels and arms were in the air, and the body caught midway hung poised

and motionless. The firing deadened. Then Merthyr drawing nearer beneath

the crag, saw one who had life in him slipping down toward the body,

and knew the man for Beppo. Beppo knocked his hands together and groaned

miserably, but flung himself astride the beak of the crag, and took

the body in his arms, sprang down with it, and lay stunned at Merthyr's

feet. Merthyr looked on the face of Carlo Ammiani.

EPILOGUE

No uncontested version of the tragedy of Count Ammiani's death passed

current in Milan during many years. With time it became disconnected

from passion, and took form in a plain narrative. He and Angelo

were captured by Major Nagen, and were, as the soldiers of the force

subsequently let it be known, roughly threatened with what he termed

I 'Brescian short credit.' The appearance of Major Weisspriess and

his claim to the command created a violent discussion between the two

officers. For Nagen, by all military rules, could well contest it. But

Weisspriess had any body of the men of the army under his charm, and

seeing the ascendency he gained with them over an unpopular officer,

he dared the stroke for the charitable object he had in view. Having

established his command, in spite of Nagen's wrathful protests and

menaces, he spoke to the prisoners, telling Carlo that for his wife's

sake he should be spared, and Angelo that he must expect the fate of a

murderer. His address to them was deliberate, and quite courteous: he

expressed himself sorry that a gallant gentleman like Angelo Guidascarpi

should merit a bloody grave, but so it was. At the same time he

entreated Count Ammiani to rely on his determination to save him. Major

Nagen did not stand far removed from them. Carlo turned to him and

repeated the words of Weisspriess; nor could Angelo restrain his

cousin's vehement renunciation of hope and life in doing this. He

accused Weisspriess of a long evasion of a brave man's obligation to

repair an injury, charged him with cowardice, and requested Major Nagen,

as a man of honour, to drag his brother officer to the duel. Nagen then

said that Major Weisspriess was his superior, adding that his gallant

brother officer had only of late objected to vindicate his reputation

with his sword. Stung finally beyond the control of an irritable temper,

Weisspriess walked out of sight of the soldiery with Carlo, to whom, at

a special formal request from Weisspriess, Nagen handed his sword. Again

he begged Count Ammiani to abstain from fighting; yea, to strike him and

disable him, and fly, rather--than provoke the skill of his right hand.

Carlo demanded his cousin's freedom. It was denied to him, and Carlo

claimed his privilege. The witnesses of the duel were Jenna and another

young subaltern: both declared it fair according to the laws of honour,

when their stupefaction on beholding the proud swordsman of the army

stretched lifeless on the brown leaves of the past year left them with

power to speak. Thus did Carlo slay his old enemy who would have served

as his friend. A shout of rescue was heard before Carlo had yielded up

his weapon. Four haggard and desperate men, headed by Barto Rizzo, burst

from an ambush on the guard encircling Angelo. There, with one thought

of saving his doomed cousin and comrade, Carlo rushed, and not one

Italian survived the fight.

An unarmed spectator upon the meadow-borders, Beppo, had but obscure

glimpses of scenes shifting like a sky in advance of hurricane winds.

Merthyr delivered the burden of death to Vittoria. Her soul had crossed

the darkness of the river of death in that quiet agony preceding the

revelation of her Maker's will, and she drew her dead husband to her

bosom and kissed him on the eyes and the forehead, not as one who had

quite gone away from her, but as one who lay upon another shore whither

she would come. The manful friend, ever by her side, saved her by his

absolute trust in her fortitude to bear the burden of the great sorrow

undeceived, and to walk with it to its last resting-place on earth

unobstructed. Clear knowledge of her, the issue of reverent love,

enabled him to read her unequalled strength of nature, and to rely

on her fidelity to her highest mortal duty in a conflict with extreme

despair. She lived through it as her Italy had lived through the hours

which brought her face to face with her dearest in death; and she also

on the day, ten years later, when an Emperor and a King stood beneath

the vault of the grand Duomo, and the organ and a peal of voices

rendered thanks to heaven for liberty, could show the fruit of her

devotion in the dark-eyed boy, Carlo Merthyr Ammiani, standing between

Merthyr and her, with old blind Agostino's hands upon his head. And then

once more, and but for once, her voice was heard in Milan.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A common age once, when he married her; now she had grown old

A fortress face; strong and massive, and honourable in ruin

Agostino was enjoying the smoke of paper cigarettes

An angry woman will think the worst

Anguish to think of having bent the knee for nothing

Art of despising what he coveted

As the Lord decided, so it would end! “Oh, delicious creed!”

Be on your guard the next two minutes he gets you alone

But is there such a thing as happiness

By our manner of loving we are known

Compliment of being outwitted by their own offspring

Conduct is never a straight index where the heart's involved

Confess no more than is necessary, but do everything you can

Critical in their first glance at a prima donna

Deep as a mother's, pure as a virgin's, fiery as a saint's

Defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends

Do I serve my hand? or, Do I serve my heart?

English antipathy to babblers

Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal

Fast growing to be an eccentric by profession

Foolish trick of thinking for herself

Forgetfulness is like a closing sea

Fortitude leaned so much upon the irony

Good nerve to face the scene which he is certain will be enacted

Government of brain; not sufficient Insurrection of heart

Grand air of pitying sadness

Had taken refuge in their opera-glasses

Hated tears, considering them a clog to all useful machinery

He is in the season of faults

He is inexorable, being the guilty one of the two

He postponed it to the next minute and the next

Her singing struck a note of grateful remembered delight

I always respected her; I never liked her

I hope I am not too hungry to discriminate

I know nothing of imagination

Impossible for us women to comprehend love without folly in man

In Italy, a husband away, ze friend takes title

Intentions are really rich possessions

Ironical fortitude

It rarely astonishes our ears It illumines our souls

Italians were like women, and wanted--a real beating

Longing for love and dependence

Love of men and women as a toy that I have played with

Madness that sane men enamoured can be struck by

Morales, madame, suit ze sun

Necessary for him to denounce somebody

Never, never love a married woman

No intoxication of hot blood to cheer those who sat at home

No word is more lightly spoken than shame

Not to be feared more than are the general race of bunglers

O heaven! of what avail is human effort?

Obedience oils necessity

Our life is but a little holding, lent To do a mighty labour

Pain is a cloak that wraps you about

Patience is the pestilence

People who can lose themselves in a ray of fancy at any season

Profound belief in her partiality for him

Question with some whether idiots should live

Rarely exacted obedience, and she was spontaneously obeyed

She thought that friendship was sweeter than love

She was sick of personal freedom

Simple obstinacy of will sustained her

Speech was a scourge to her sense of hearing

Taint of the hypocrisy which comes with shame

The devil trusts nobody

The divine afflatus of enthusiasm buoyed her no longer

They take fever for strength, and calmness for submission

Too weak to resist, to submit to an outrage quietly

Too well used to defeat to believe readily in victory

Was born on a hired bed

Watch, and wait

We are good friends till we quarrel again

We can bear to fall; we cannot afford to draw back

Went into endless invalid's laughter

Who shrinks from an hour that is suspended in doubt

Whole body of fanatics combined to precipitate the devotion

Why should these men take so much killing?

Will not admit the existence of a virtue in an opposite opinion

Women and men are in two hostile camps

You can master pain, but not doubt

Youth will not believe that stupidity and beauty can go together