The interview between them took place at Oliosi.  There, also, she met Georgiana Ford, the half-sister of Merthyr Powys, who told her that Merthyr and Augustus Gambier were in the ranks of a volunteer contingent in the king’s army, and might have been present at Pastrengo.  Georgiana held aloof from battle-fields, her business being simply to serve as Merthyr’s nurse in case of wounds, or to see the last of him in case of death.  She appeared to have no enthusiasm.  She seconded strongly the vehement persuasions addressed by Pericles to Vittoria.  Her disapproval of the presence of her sex on fields of battle was precise.  Pericles had followed the army to give Vittoria one last chance, he said, and drag her away from this sick country, as he called it, pointing at the dusty land from the windows of the inn.  On first seeing her he gasped like one who has recovered a lost thing.  To Laura he was a fool; but Vittoria enjoyed his wildest outbursts, and her half-sincere humility encouraged him to think that he had captured her at last.  He enlarged on the perils surrounding her voice in dusty bellowing Lombardy, and on the ardour of his friendship in exposing himself to perils as tremendous, that he might rescue her.  While speaking he pricked a lively ear for the noise of guns, hearing a gun in everything, and jumping to the window with horrid imprecations.  His carriage was horsed at the doors below.  Let the horses die, he said, let the coachman have sun-stroke.  Let hundreds perish, if Vittoria would only start in an hour-in two—­to-night—­to-morrow.

“Because, do you see,”—­he turned to Laura and Georgiana, submitting to the vexatious necessity of seeming reasonable to these creatures,—­“she is a casket for one pearl.  It is only one, but it is one, mon Dieu! and inscrutable heaven, mesdames, has made the holder of it mad.  Her voice has but a sole skin; it is not like a body; it bleeds to death at a scratch.  A spot on the pearl, and it is perished—­pfoof!  Ah, cruel thing! impious, I say.  I have watched, I have reared her.  Speak to me of mothers!  I have cherished her for her splendid destiny—­to see it go down, heels up, among quarrels of boobies!  Yes; we have war in Italy.  Fight!  Fight in this beautiful climate that you may be dominated by a blue coat, not by a white coat.  We are an intelligent race; we are a civilized people; we will fight for that.  What has a voice of the very heavens to do with your fighting?  I heard it first in England, in a firwood, in a month of Spring, at night-time, fifteen miles and a quarter from the city of London—­oh, city of peace!  Sandra you will come there.  I give you thousands additional to the sum stipulated.  You have no rival.  Sandra Belloni! no rival, I say”—­he invoked her in English, “and you hear—­you, to be a draggle-tail vivandiere wiz a brandy-bottle at your hips and a reputation going like ze brandy.  Ah! pardon, mesdames; but did mankind ever see a frenzy like this girl’s?  Speak, Sandra.  I could cry it like Michiella to Camilla—­Speak!”