How proud and glad was I that morning after our victory!  I saw great Italy, beautiful Italy, once more put on her diadem; I beheld the future prospect of one broad, free land, barriered by Alps and set impregnably in summer seas, storied seas, keys of the West and East.  We embraced each other as brothers of this glorious nation, ancient Rome risen from trance; as we walked the streets, we sang; Milan was turbulent with gladness; no gala-day was ever half so bright; the very spires appeared to spring in the white radiance of their flames up a deeper heaven; the sun stayed at perpetual dawn for us.  Walking along, jubilant and daring, at length we paused in a square where a fountain dashed up its column of sunshine, and laved our hands.  By Heaven!  We forgot independence, Italy, freedom; we were crazed with success and hope; it seemed that the stream was Austrian blood!  Then, in the midst of all, I looked up,—­and on a balcony she stood.  A fair woman, with hair like shredded light, her great blue eyes wide and full and of intense dye, her nostril distended with pride, and fear and hate of us,—­but on the full lips, ripe with crimson bloom, juicy and young and fresh, on those Love lay.  The others wound forward,—­I with them, yet apart; and my eyes became fixed on hers.  Then I lifted my cap with its tricolor.  She did not return the courtesy, but stood as if spellbound, one hand threading back the straying hair, the lips a little parted; suddenly she turned to fly, that hand upraised to the casement’s side, and still, as she looked back, the beautiful eyes on mine.  My companions had preceded me; we were alone in the square; she wavered as she stood, then tore a rose from her bosom, kissed it deep into its heart, and tossed it to me.

“Let all its petals be joys!” I said, and she vanished.

Oh, friend, the leaves have fallen, the rose is dead!  Look!  I have kept it through all,—­sear leaf and withered spray!

That night we danced; and the Austrian girl was there.  They told me she was exiled, and that she loved liberty; no one told me she was a spy.  I saw her swim along the dance, the white satin of her raiment flashing perpetual interchange of lustrous and obscure, the warm air playing in the lace that fell like the spray of the fountain round her golden hair and over her pearly shoulder; grace swept in all her motions, beauty crowned her, she seemed the perfect, pitch of womanhood.

Still she swims along the lazy line with indolent pleasure, still floats in dreamy waltz-circles perchance, still bends to the swaying tune as the hazel-branch bonds to the hidden treasure,—­but as for me, my dancing days are over.