Vittoria | Page 7

Looking up to the mountain's top, they had perceived the figure of one
who stood with folded arms, sufficiently near for the person of an
expected friend to be descried. They waved their hats, and Carlo shot
ahead. The others trod after him more deliberately, but in glad
excitement, speculating on the time which this sixth member of the
party, who were engaged to assemble at a certain hour of the morning
upon yonder height, had taken to reach the spot from Omegna, or Orta,
or Pella, and rejoicing that his health should be so stout in despite of his
wasting labours under city smoke.
"Yes, health!" said Agostino. "Is it health, do you think? It's the heart of
the man! and a heart with a mill-stone about it--a heart to breed a
country from! There stands the man who has faith in Italy, though she
has been lying like a corpse for centuries. God bless him! He has no
other comfort. Viva l'Italia!"
The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the
eminence overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the
air sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he,
until Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene
stedfastly, with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured
long exile, and finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange,
beloved, visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the
far-spreading hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the
gleam of the distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an

airy host, mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of a
flight toward the underlying purple land.
CHAPTER II
He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood
defined against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the
student's aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the
straining of the buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one who
waited and listened, which distinguished his figure, detracted from the
promise of other than contemplative energy, until his eyes were fairly
seen and felt. That is, until the observer became aware that those soft
and large dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In them lay no
abstracted student's languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but a
quiet grappling force engaged the penetrating look. Gazing upon them,
you were drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring wheels of a
capacious and a vigorous mind, that was both reasoning and prompt,
keen of intellect, acting throughout all its machinery, and having all
under full command: an orbed mind, supplying its own philosophy, and
arriving at the sword- stroke by logical steps,--a mind much less supple
than a soldier's; anything but the mind of a Hamlet. The eyes were dark
as the forest's border is dark; not as night is dark. Under favourable
lights their colour was seen to be a deep rich brown, like the chestnut,
or more like the hazeledged sunset brown which lies upon our western
rivers in the winter floods, when night begins to shadow them.
The side-view of his face was an expression of classic beauty rarely
now to be beheld, either in classic lands or elsewhere. It was severe; the
tender serenity of the full bow of the eyes relieved it. In profile they
showed little of their intellectual quality, but what some might have
thought a playful luminousness, and some a quick pulse of feeling. The
chin was firm; on it, and on the upper lip, there was a clipped growth of
black hair. The whole visage widened upward from the chin, though
not very markedly before it reached the broad-lying brows. The temples
were strongly indented by the swelling of the forehead above them: and
on both sides of the head there ran a pregnant ridge, such as will
sometimes lift men a deplorable half inch above the earth we tread. If

this man was a problem to others, he was none to himself; and when
others called him an idealist, he accepted the title, reading himself,
notwithstanding, as one who was less flighty than many philosophers
and professedly practical teachers of his generation. He saw far, and he
grasped ends beyond obstacles: he was nourished by sovereign
principles; he despised material present interests; and, as I have said, he
was less supple than a soldier. If the title of idealist belonged to him,
we will not immediately decide that it was opprobrious. The idealized
conception of stern truths played about his head certainly for those who
knew and who loved it. Such a man, perceiving a devout end to be
reached, might prove less scrupulous in his course, possibly, and less
remorseful,