rest:  she might sing when she wanted money.  A letter recently received from Mr. Pericles said that Italy was her child’s ruin, and she hoped Emilia was ready to do as he advised, and hurry to England, where singing did not upset people, and people lived like real Christians, not——­Vittoria flapped her hand, and would not hear of the unchristian crimes of the South.  As regarded the expected defence of Milan, the little woman said, that if it brought on a bombardment, she would call it unpardonable wickedness, and only hoped that her daughter would repent.

Zotti stood by, interpreting the English to himself by tones.  “The amiable donnina is not of our persuasion,” he observed.  “She remains dissatisfied with patriotic Milan.  I have exhibited to her my dabs of bread through all the processes of making and baking.  It is in vain.  She rejects analogy.  She is wilful as a principessina:  ’Tis so! ’tis not so! ’tis my will! be silent, thou!  Signora, I have been treated in that way by your excellent mother.”

“Zotti has not been paid for three weeks, and he certainly has not mentioned it or looked it, I will say, Emilia.”

“Zotti has had something to think of during the last three weeks,” said Vittoria, touching him kindly on the arm.

The confectioner lifted his fingers and his big brown eyes after them, expressive of the unutterable thoughts.  He informed her that he had laid in a stock of flour, in the expectation that Carlo Alberto would defend the city:  The Milanese were ready to aid him, though some, as Zotti confessed, had ceased to effervesce; and a great number who were perfectly ready to fight regarded his tardy appeal to Italian patriotism very coldly.  Zotti set out in person to discover Giacinta.  The girl could hardly fetch her breath when she saw her mistress.  She was in Laura’s service, and said that Laura had brought a wounded Englishman from the field of Custozza.  Vittoria hurried to Laura, with whom she found Merthyr, blue-white as a corpse, having been shot through the body.  His sister was in one of the Lombard hamlets, unaware of his fall; Beppo had been sent to her.

They noticed one another’s embrowned complexions, but embraced silently.  “Twice widowed!” Laura said when they sat together.  Laura hushed all speaking of the war or allusion to a single incident of the miserable campaign, beyond the bare recital of Vittoria’s adventures; yet when Vicenza by chance was mentioned, she burst out:  “They are not cities, they are living shrieks.  They have been made impious for ever.  Burn them to ashes, that they may not breathe foul upon heaven!  “She had clung to the skirts of the army as far as the field of Custozza.  “He,” she said, pointing to the room where Merthyr lay,—­“he groans less than the others I have nursed.  Generally, when they looked at me, they appeared obliged to recollect that it was not I who had hurt them.  Poor souls! some ended in great torment.  ’I think of them as the happiest; for pain is a cloak that wraps you about, and I remember one middle-aged man who died softly at Custozza, and said, ‘Beaten!’ To take that thought as your travelling companion into the gulf, must be worse than dying of agony; at least, I think so.”