Vittoria compelled him to despatch his horses to stables.  He had relays of horses at war-prices between Castiglione and Pavia, and a retinue of servants; nor did he hesitate to inform the ladies that, before entrusting his person to the hazards of war, he had taken care to be provided with safe-conduct passes for both armies, as befitted a prudent man of peace—­“or sense; it is one, mesdames.”

Notwithstanding his terror at the guns, and disgust at the soldiery and the bad fare at the inn, Vittoria’s presence kept him lingering in this wretched place, though he cried continually, “I shall have heart-disease.”  He believed at first that he should subdue her; then it became his intention to carry her off.

It was to see Merthyr that she remained.  Merthyr came there the day after the engagement at Santa Lucia.  They had not met since the days at Meran.  He was bronzed, and keen with strife, and looked young, but spoke not over-hopefully.  He scolded her for wishing to taste battle, and compared her to a bad swimmer on deep shores.  Pericles bounded with delight to hear him, and said he had not supposed there was so much sense in Powys.  Merthyr confessed that the Austrians had as good as beaten them at Santa Lucia.  The tactical combinations of the Piedmontese were wretched.  He was enamoured of the gallantly of the Duke of Savoy, who had saved the right wing of the army from rout while covering the backward movement.  Why there had been any fight at all at Santa Lucia, where nothing was to be gained, much to be lost, he was incapable of telling; but attributed it to an antique chivalry on the part of the king, that had prompted the hero to a trial of strength, a bout of blood-letting.

“You do think he is a hero?” said Vittoria.

“He is; and he will march to Venice.”

“And open the opera at Venice,” Pericles sneered.  “Powys, mon cher, cure her of this beastly dream.  It is a scandal to you to want a woman’s help.  You were defeated at Santa Lucia.  I say bravo to anything that brings you to reason.  Bravo!  You hear me.”

The engagement at Santa Lucia was designed by the king to serve as an instigating signal for the Veronese to rise in revolt; and this was the secret of Charles Albert’s stultifying manoeuvres between Peschiera and Mantua.  Instead of matching his military skill against the wary old Marshal’s, he was offering incentives to conspiracy.  Distrusting the revolution, which was a force behind him, he placed such reliance on its efforts in his front as to make it the pivot of his actions.

“The volunteers North-east of Vicenza are doing the real work for us, I believe,” said Merthyr; and it seemed so then, as it might have been indeed, had they not been left almost entirely to themselves to do it.

These tidings of a fight lost set Laura and Vittoria quivering with nervous irritation.  They had been on the field of Pastrengo, and it was won.  They had been absent from Santa Lucia.  What was the deduction?  Not such as reason would have made for them; but they were at the mercy of the currents of the blood.  “Let us go on,” said Laura.  Merthyr refused to convoy them.  Pericles drove with him an hour on the road, and returned in glee, to find Vittoria and Laura seated in their carriage, and Luigi scuffling with Beppo.