the holders of the Alps.  Count Serabiglione mixed little with his countrymen,—­the statement might be inversed,—­but when, perchance, he was among them, he talked willingly of the Tedeschi, and voluntarily declared them to be gross, obstinate, offensive-bears, in short.  At such times he would intimate in any cordial ear that the serpent was probably a match for the bear in a game of skill, and that the wisdom of the serpent was shown in his selection of the bear as his master, since, by the ordination of circumstances, master he must have.  The count would speak pityingly of the poor depraved intellects which admitted the possibility of a coming Kingdom of Italy united:  the lunatics who preached of it he considered a sort of self-elected targets for appointed files of Tyrolese jagers.  But he was vindictive against him whom he called the professional doctrinaire, and he had vile names for the man.  Acknowledging that Italy mourned her present woes, he charged this man with the crime of originating them:—­ and why? what was his object?  He was, the count declared in answer, a born intriguer, a lover of blood, mad for the smell of it!—­an Old Man of the Mountain; a sheaf of assassins; and more—­the curse of Italy!  There should be extradition treaties all over the world to bring this arch-conspirator to justice.  The door of his conscience had been knocked at by a thousand bleeding ghosts, and nothing had opened to them.  What was Italy in his eyes?  A chess-board; and Italians were the chessmen to this cold player with live flesh.  England nourished the wretch, that she might undermine the peace of the Continent.

Count Serabiglione would work himself up in the climax of denunciation, and then look abroad frankly as one whose spirit had been relieved.  He hated bad men; and it was besides necessary for him to denounce somebody, and get relief of some kind.  Italians edged away from him.  He was beginning to feel that he had no country.  The detested title ’Young Italy’ hurried him into fits of wrath.  ‘I am,’ he said, ’one of the Old Italians, if a distinction is to be made.’  He assured his listeners that he was for his commune, his district, and aired his old-Italian prejudices delightedly; clapping his hands to the quarrels of Milan and Brescia; Florence and Siena—­haply the feuds of villages—­and the common North-Italian jealousy of the chief city.  He had numerous capital tales to tell of village feuds, their date and origin, the stupid effort to heal them, and the wider consequent split; saying, ’We have, all Italians, the tenacity, the unforgiveness, the fervent blood of pure Hebrews; and a little more gaiety, perhaps; together with a love of fair things.  We can outlive ten races of conquerors.’

In this fashion he philosophized, or forced a kind of philosophy.  But he had married his daughter to an Austrian, which was what his countrymen could not overlook, and they made him feel it.  Little by little, half acquiescing, half protesting, and gradually denationalized, the count was edged out of Italian society, save of the parasitical class, which he very much despised.  He was not a happy man.  Success at the Imperial Court might have comforted him; but a remorseless sensitiveness of his nature tripped his steps.