Vittoria’s depression was real, though her strong vitality appeared to mock it.  Letters from Milan, enclosed to the duchess, spoke of Carlo Ammiani’s imprisonment as a matter that might be indefinitely prolonged.  His mother had been subjected to an examination; she had not hesitated to confess that she had received her nephew in her house, but it could not be established against her that it was not Carlo whom she had passed off to the sbirri as her son.  Countess Ammiani wrote to Laura, telling her she scarcely hoped that Carlo would obtain his liberty save upon the arrest of Angelo:—­“Therefore, what I most desire, I dare not pray for!” That line of intense tragic grief haunted Vittoria like a veiled head thrusting itself across the sunlight.  Countess Ammiani added that she must give her son what news she could gather;—­“Concerning you,” said Laura, interpreting the sentence:  “Bitter days do this good, they make a proud woman abjure the traditions of her caste.”  A guarded answer was addressed, according to the countess’s directions, to Sarpo the bookseller, in Milan.  For purposes of such a nature, Barto Rizzo turned the uneasy craven to account.

It happened that one of the maids at Sonnenberg was about to marry a peasant, of Meran, part proprietor of a vineyard, and the nuptials were to be celebrated at the castle.  Among those who thronged the courtyard on the afternoon of the ceremony, Vittoria beheld her faithful Beppo, who related the story of his pursuit of her, and the perfidy of Luigi;—­a story so lengthy, that his voluble tongue running at full speed could barely give the outlines of it.  He informed her, likewise, that he had been sent for, while lying in Trent, by Captain Weisspriess, whom he had seen at an inn of the Ultenthal, weak but improving.  Beppo was the captain’s propitiatory offering to Vittoria.  Meanwhile the ladies sat on a terrace, overlooking the court, where a stout fellow in broad green braces and blue breeches lay half across a wooden table, thrumming a zither, which set the groups in motion.  The zither is a melancholy little instrument; in range of expression it is to the harp what the winchat is to the thrush; or to the violin, what that bird is to the nightingale; yet few instruments are so exciting:  here and there along these mountain valleys you may hear a Tyrolese maid set her voice to its plaintive thin tones; but when the strings are swept madly there is mad dancing; it catches at the nerves.  “Andreas!  Andreas!” the dancers shouted to encourage the player.  Some danced with vine-poles; partners broke and wandered at will, taking fresh partners, and occasionally huddling in confusion, when the poles were levelled and tilted at them, and they dispersed.  Beppo, dancing mightily to recover the use of his legs, met his acquaintance Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz, and the pair devoted themselves to a rivalry of capers; jump, stamp, shuffle, leg aloft, arms in air, yell and shriek:  all took hands around them and streamed, tramping the