“We’ve had enough of this lad,” said Corte.  “His laundress is following him with a change of linen, I suppose, or it’s a scent-bottle.  He’s an admirable representative of the Lombard metropolis!” Corte drawled out the words in prodigious mimicry.  “If Milan has nothing better to send than such a fellow, we’ll finish without her, and shame the beast that she is.  She has been always a treacherous beast!”

“Poor Milan!” sighed the Chief; “she lies under the beak of the vulture, and has twice been devoured; but she has a soul:  she proves it.  Ammiani, too, will prove his value.  I have no doubt of him.  As to boys, or even girls, you know my faith is in the young.  Through them Italy lives.  What power can teach devotion to the old?”

“I thank you, signore,” Agostino gesticulated.

“But, tell me, when did you learn it, my friend?”

In answer, Agostino lifted his hand a little boy’s height from the earth.

The old man then said:  “I am afraid, my dear Corte, you must accept the fellowship of a girl as well as of a boy upon this occasion.  See! our Carlo!  You recognize that dancing speck below there?—­he has joined himself—­the poor lad wishes he could, I dare swear!—­to another bigger speck, which is verily a lady:  who has joined herself to a donkey—­a common habit of the sex, I am told; but I know them not.  That lady, signor Ugo, is the signorina Vittoria.  You stare?  But, I tell you, the game cannot go on without her; and that is why I have permitted you to knock the ball about at your own pleasure for these forty minutes.”

Corte drew his under-lip on his reddish stubble moustache.  “Are we to have women in a conference?” he asked from eye to eye.

“Keep to the number, Ugo; and moreover, she is not a woman, but a noble virgin.  I discern a distinction, though you may not.  The Vestal’s fire burns straight.”

“Who is she?”

“It rejoices me that she should be so little known.  All the greater the illumination when her light shines out!  The signorina Vittoria is a cantatrice who is about to appear upon the boards.”

“Ah! that completes it.”  Corte rose to his feet with an air of desperation.  “We require to be refreshed with quavers and crescendos and trillets!  Who ever knew a singer that cared an inch of flesh for her country?  Money, flowers, flattery, vivas! but, money! money! and Austrian as good as Italian.  I’ve seen the accursed wenches bow gratefully for Austrian bouquets:—­bow? ay, and more; and when the Austrian came to them red with our blood.  I spit upon their polluted cheeks!  They get us an ill name wherever they go.  These singers have no country.  One—­I knew her—­betrayed Filippo Mastalone, and sang the night of the day he was shot.  I heard the white demon myself.  I could have taken her long neck till she twisted like a serpent and hissed.  May heaven forgive me for not levelling a pistol at her head!  If God, my friends, had put the thought into my brain that night!”