Barto Rizzo had silence about him without having to ask for it, when he followed Violetta into Countess Ammiani’s saloon of reception.  Carlo was leaning over his mother’s chair, holding Vittoria’s wrist across it, and so enclosing her, while both young faces were raised to the bowed forehead of the countess.  They stood up.  Violetta broke through the formal superlatives of an Italian greeting.  “Speak to me alone,” she murmured for Carlo’s ear and glancing at Barto:  “Here is a madman; a mild one, I trust.”  She contrived to show that she was not responsible for his intrusion.  Countess Ammiani gathered Vittoria in her arms; Carlo stepped a pace before them.  Terror was on the venerable lady’s face, wrath on her son’s.  As he fronted Barto, he motioned a finger to the curtain hangings, and Violetta, quick at reading signs, found his bare sword there.  “But you will not want it,” she remarked, handing the hilt to him, and softly eyeing the impression of her warm touch on the steel as it passed.

“Carlo, thou son of Paolo!  Countess Marcellina, wife of a true patriot! stand aside, both of you.  It is between the Countess Alessandra and myself,” so the man commenced, with his usual pomp of interjection.  “Swords and big eyes,—­are they things to stop me?” Barto laughed scornfully.  He had spoken in the full roll of his voice, and the sword was hard back for the thrust.

Vittoria disengaged herself from the countess.  “Speak to me,” she said, dismayed by the look of what seemed an exaltation of madness in Barto’s visage, but firm as far as the trembling of her limbs would let her be.

He dropped to her feet and kissed them.

“Emilia Alessandra Belloni!  Vittoria!  Countess Alessandra Ammiani! pity me.  Hear this:—­I hated you as the devil is hated.  Yesterday I woke up in prison to hear that I must adore you.  God of all the pits of punishment! was there ever one like this?  I had to change heads.”

It was the language of a distorted mind, and lamentable to hear when a sob shattered his voice.

“Am I mad?” he asked piteously, clasping his temples.

“You are as we are, if you weep,” said Vittoria, to sooth him.

“Then I have been mad!” he cried, starting.  “I knew you a wicked virgin —­signora contessa, confess to me, marriage has changed you.  Has it not changed you?  In the name of the Father of the Saints, help me out of it:  —­my brain reels backwards.  You were false, but marriage—­It acts in this way with you women; yes, that we know—­you were married, and you said, ‘Now let us be faithful.’  Did you not say that?  I am forgiving, though none think it.  You have only to confess.  If you will not,—­oh!” He smote his face, groaning.

Carlo spoke a stern word in an undertone; counselling him to be gone.