Vittoria | Page 8

than revolutionary Generals. His smile was quite unclouded,
and came softly as a curve in water. It seemed to flow with, and to pass
in and out of, his thoughts, to be a part of his emotion and his meaning
when it shone transiently full. For as he had an orbed mind, so had he
an orbed nature. The passions were absolutely in harmony with the
intelligence. He had the English manner; a remarkable simplicity
contrasting with the demonstrative outcries and gesticulations of his
friends when they joined him on the height. Calling them each by name,
he received their caresses and took their hands; after which he touched
the old man's shoulder.
"Agostino, this has breathed you?"
"It has; it has, my dear and best one!" Agostino replied. "But here is a
good market-place for air. Down below we have to scramble for it in
the mire. The spies are stifling down below. I don't know my own
shadow. I begin to think that I am important. Footing up a mountain
corrects the notion somewhat. Yonder, I believe, I see the Grisons,
where Freedom sits. And there's the Monte della Disgrazia. Carlo
Alberto should be on the top of it, but he is invisible. I do not see that
Unfortunate."
"No," said Carlo Ammiani, who chimed to his humour more readily
than the rest, and affected to inspect the Grisons' peak through a
diminutive opera-glass. "No, he is not there."
"Perhaps, my son, he is like a squirrel, and is careful to run up t'other

side of the stem. For he is on that mountain; no doubt of it can exist
even in the Boeotian mind of one of his subjects; myself, for example.
It will be an effulgent fact when he gains the summit."
The others meantime had thrown themselves on the grass at the feet of
their manifestly acknowledged leader, and looked up for Agostino to
explode the last of his train of conceits. He became aware that the
moment for serious talk had arrived, and bent his body, groaning loudly,
and uttering imprecations against him whom he accused of being the
promoter of its excruciating stiffness, until the ground relieved him of
its weight. Carlo continued standing, while his eyes examined restlessly
the slopes just surmounted by them, and occasionally the deep descent
over the green-glowing Orta Lake. It was still early morning. The heat
was tempered by a cool breeze that came with scents of thyme. They
had no sight of human creature anywhere, but companionship of Alps
and birds of upper air; and though not one of them seasoned the
converse with an exclamation of joy and of blessings upon a place of
free speech and safety, the thought was in their hunted bosoms,
delicious as a woodland rivulet that sings only to the leaves
overshadowing it.
They were men who had sworn to set a nation free,--free from the
foreigner, to begin with.
(He who tells this tale is not a partisan; he would deal equally toward
all. Of strong devotion, of stout nobility, of unswerving faith and
self-sacrifice, he must approve; and when these qualities are displayed
in a contest of forces, the wisdom of means employed, or of ultimate
views entertained, may be questioned and condemned; but the men
themselves may not be.)
These men had sworn their oath, knowing the meaning of it, and the
nature of the Fury against whom men who stand voluntarily pledged to
any great resolve must thenceforward match themselves. Many of the
original brotherhood had fallen, on the battle-field, on the glacis, or in
the dungeon. All present, save the youthfuller Carlo, had suffered.
Imprisonment and exile marked the Chief. Ugo Corte, of Bergamo, had
seen his family swept away by the executioner and pecuniary penalties.

Thick scars of wounds covered the body and disfigured the face of
Giulio Bandinelli. Agostino had crawled but half-a-year previously out
of his Piedmontese cell, and Marco Sana, the Brescian, had in such a
place tasted of veritable torture. But if the calamity of a great oath was
upon them, they had now in their faithful prosecution of it the support
which it gives. They were unwearied; they had one object; the mortal
anguish they had gone through had left them no sense for regrets. Life
had become the field of an endless engagement to them; and as in battle
one sees beloved comrades struck down, and casts but a glance at their
prostrate forms, they heard the mention of a name, perchance, and with
a word or a sign told what was to be said of a passionate glorious heart
at rest, thanks to Austrian or vassal-Sardinian mercy.
So they lay there and discussed their plans.
"From what quarter do you apprehend the surprise?" Ugo Corte
glanced up from the