nature, his severe condemnation of him would be tempered.  In fact, she was doing what makes a woman excessively tender and opinionated; she was petting her idea of the misunderstood one:  she was thinking that she divined the king’s character by mystical intuition; I will dare to say, maternally apprehended it.  And it was a character strangely open to feminine perceptions, while to masculine comprehension it remained a dead blank, done either in black or in white.

Vittoria insisted on praising the king to Laura.

“With all my heart,” Laura said, “so long as he is true to Italy.”

“How, then, am I hypocritical?”

“My Sandra, you are certainly perverse.  You admitted that you did something for the sake of pleasing Countess Ammiani.”

“I did.  But to be hypocritical one must be false.”

“Oh!” went Laura.

“And I write to Carlo.  He does not care for the king; therefore it is needless for me to name the king to him; and I shall not.”

Laura said, “Very well.”  She saw a little deeper than the perversity, though she did not see the springs.  In Vittoria’s letter to her lover, she made no allusion to the Sword of Italy.

Countess Ammiani forwarded both letters on to Brescia.

When Carlo had finished reading them, he heard all Brescia clamouring indignantly at the king for having disarmed volunteers on Lago Maggiore and elsewhere in his dominions.  Milan was sending word by every post of the overbearing arrogance of the Piedmontese officers and officials, who claimed a prostrate submission from a city fresh with the ardour of the glory it had won for itself, and that would fain have welcomed them as brothers.  Romara and others wrote of downright visible betrayal.  It was a time of passions;—­great readiness for generosity, equal promptitude for undiscriminating hatred.  Carlo read Vittoria’s praise of the king with insufferable anguish.  “You—­you part of me, can write like this!” he struck the paper vehemently.  The fury of action transformed the gentle youth.  Countess Ammiani would not have forwarded the letter addressed to herself had she dreamed the mischief it might do.  Carlo saw double-dealing in the absence of any mention of the king in his own letter.

“Quit Turin at once,” he dashed hasty lines to Vittoria; “and no ‘Viva il Re’ till we know what he may merit.  Old delusions are pardonable; but you must now look abroad with your eyes.  Your words should be the echoes of my soul.  Your acts are mine.  For the sake of the country, do nothing to fill me with shame.  The king is a traitor.  I remember things said of him by Agostino; I subscribe to them every one.  Were you like any other Italian girl, you might cry for him—­who would care!  But you are Vittoria.  Fly to my mother’s arms, and there rest.  The king betrays us.  Is a stronger word necessary?  I am writing too harshly to you;—­and here