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.

“Padrone, see how I assist you,” cried Luigi.

Upon this Beppo instantly made a swan’s neck of his body and trumpeted:  “A sally from the fortress for forage.”

“Whip! whip!” Pericles shouted to his coachman, and the two carriages parted company at the top of their speed.

Pericles fell a victim to a regiment of bersaglieri that wanted horses, and unceremoniously stopped his pair and took possession of them on the route for Peschiera.  He was left in a stranded carriage between a dusty ditch and a mulberry bough.  Vittoria and Laura were not much luckier.  They were met by a band of deserters, who made no claim upon the horses, but stood for drink, and having therewith fortified their fine opinion of themselves, petitioned for money.  A kiss was their next demand.  Money and good humour saved the women from indignity.  The band of rascals went off with a ‘Viva l’Italia.’  Such scum is upon every popular rising, as Vittoria had to learn.  Days of rain and an incomprehensible inactivity of the royal army kept her at a miserable inn, where the walls were bare, the cock had crowed his last.  The guns of Peschiera seemed to roam over the plain like an echo unwillingly aroused that seeks a hollow for its further sleep.  Laura sat pondering for hours, harsh in manner, as if she hated her.  “I think,” she said once, “that women are those persons who have done evil in another world:”  The “why?” from Vittoria was uttered simply to awaken friendly talk, but Laura relapsed into her gloom.  A village priest, a sleek gentle creature, who shook his head to earth when he hoped, and filled his nostrils with snuff when he desponded, gave them occasional companionship under the title of consolation.  He wished the