Vittoria | Page 4

XV. AMMIANI
THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT XVI. COUNTESS AMMIANI XVII.
IN THE PIAZZA D'ARMI XVIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH
XIX. THE PRIMA DONNA
BOOK 4. XX. THE OPERA OF CAMILLA XXI. THE THIRD ACT
XXII. WILFRID COMES FORWARD XXIII. FIRST HOURS OF
THE FLIGHT XXIV. ADVENTURES OF VITTORIA AND
ANGELO XXV. ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS
BOOK 5. XXVI. THE DUEL IN THE PASS XXVII. A NEW
ORDEAL XXVIII. THE ESCAPE OF ANGELO
BOOK 6. XXIX. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE
WAR--THE TOBACCO RIOTS --RINALDO GUIDASCARPI XXX.
EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE FIVE DAYS
OF MILAN XXXI. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE
WAR--VITTORIA DISOBEYS HER LOVER XXXII. EPISODES OF
THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE TREACHERY OF
PERICLES-THE WRITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO
GUIDASCARPI
BOOK 7. XXXIII. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE
WAR--COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN-- THE STORY OF THE
GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE VOLUNTEERS XXXIV.

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE DEEDS OF
BARTO RIZZO-- THE MEETING AT ROVEREDO XXXV. CLOSE
OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN--VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY
XXXVI. A FRESH ENTANGLEMENT XXXVII. ON LAGO
MAGGIORE XXXVIII. VIOLETTA D'ISORELLA XXXIX. ANNA
OF LENKENSTEIN
BOOK 8. XL. THROUGH THE WINTER XLI. THE INTERVIEW
XLII. THE SHADOW OF CONSPIRACY XLIII. THE LAST
MEETING IN MILAN XLIV. THE WIFE AND THE HUSBAND
XLV. SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END XLVI.
THE LAST EPILOGUE

VITTORIA
BOOK 1.
I. UP MONTE MOTTERONE II. ON THE HEIGHTS III.
SIGNORINA VITTORIA IV. AMMIANI'S INTERCESSION V. THE
SPY VI. THE WARNING VII. BARTO RIZZO VIII. THE LETTER
CHAPTER I
From Monte Motterone you survey the Lombard plain. It is a towering
dome of green among a hundred pinnacles of grey and rust-red crags.
At dawn the summit of the mountain has an eagle eye for the far
Venetian boundary and the barrier of the Apennines; but with sunrise
come the mists. The vast brown level is seen narrowing in; the Ticino
and the Sesia waters, nearest, quiver on the air like sleepy lakes; the
plain is engulphed up to the high ridges of the distant Southern
mountain range, which lie stretched to a faint cloud-like line, in shape
like a solitary monster of old seas crossing the Deluge. Long arms of
vapour stretch across the urn-like valleys, and gradually thickening and
swelling upward, enwrap the scored bodies of the ashen-faced peaks
and the pastures of the green mountain, till the heights become islands
over a forgotten earth. Bells of herds down the hidden run of the sweet

grasses, and a continuous leaping of its rivulets, give the Motterone a
voice of youth and homeliness amid that stern company of Titan-heads,
for whom the hawk and the vulture cry. The storm has beaten at them
until they have got the aspect of the storm. They take colour from
sunlight, and are joyless in colour as in shade. When the lower world is
under pushing steam, they wear the look of the revolted sons of Time,
fast chained before scornful heaven in an iron peace. Day at last brings
vigorous fire; arrows of light pierce the mist-wreaths, the dancing
draperies, the floors of vapour; and the mountain of piled pasturages is
seen with its foot on the shore of Lago Maggiore. Down an extreme
gulf the full sunlight, as if darting on a jewel in the deeps, seizes the
blue-green lake with its isles. The villages along the darkly-wooded
borders of the lake show white as clustered swans; here and there a
tented boat is visible, shooting from terraces of vines, or hanging on its
shadow. Monte Boscero is unveiled; the semicircle of the Piedmontese
and the Swiss peaks, covering Lake Orta, behind, on along the Ticinese
and the Grisons, leftward toward and beyond the Lugano hills, stand
bare in black and grey and rust-red and purple. You behold a burnished
realm of mountain and plain beneath the royal sun of Italy. In the
foreground it shines hard as the lines of an irradiated Cellini shield.
Farther away, over middle ranges that are soft and clear, it melts,
confusing the waters with hot rays, and the forests with darkness, to
where, wavering in and out of view like flying wings, and shadowed
like wings of archangels with rose and with orange and with violet,
silverwhite Alps are seen. You might take them for mystical streaming
torches on the border-ground between vision and fancy. They lean as in
a great flight forward upon Lombardy.
The curtain of an early autumnal morning was everywhere lifted
around the Motterone, save for one milky strip of cloud that lay
lizard-like across the throat of Monte Boscero facing it, when a party of
five footfarers, who had met from different points of ascent some way
below, and were climbing the mountain together, stood upon the
cropped herbage of the second plateau, and stopped to