At an inn that they reached toward evening she saw the innkeeper shoot a little ball of paper at an Italian corporal, who put his foot on it and picked it up.  The soldier subsequently passed through the ranks of his comrades, gathering winks and grins.  They were to have rested at the inn, but Count Karl was warned by scouts, which was sufficient to make Pericles cling to him in avoidance of the volunteers, of whom mainly he was in terror.  He looked ague-stricken.  He would not listen to her, or to reason in any shape.  “I am on the sea—­shall I trust a boat?  I stick to a ship,” he said.  The soldiers marched till midnight.  It was arranged that the carriage should strike off for Schio at dawn.  The soldiers bivouacked on the slope of one of the low undulations falling to the Vicentino plain.  Vittoria spread her cloak, and lay under bare sky, not suffering the woman to be ejected from the carriage.  Hitherto Luigi had avoided her.  Under pretence of doubling Count Karl’s cloak as a pillow for her head, he whispered, “If the signorina hears shots let her lie on the ground flat as a sheet.”  The peacefulness surrounding her precluded alarm.  There was brilliant moonlight, and the host of stars, all dim; and first they beckoned her up to come away from trouble, and then, through long gazing, she had the fancy that they bent and swam about her, making her feel that she lay in the hollows of a warm hushed sea.  She wished for her lover.

Men and officers were lying at a stone’s-throw distant.  The Tyrolese had lit a fire for cooking purposes, by which four of them stood, and, lifting hands, sang one of their mountain songs, that seemed to her to spring like clear water into air, and fall wavering as a feather falls, or the light about a stone in water.  It lulled her to a half-sleep, during which she fancied hearing a broad imitation of a cat’s-call from the mountains, that was answered out of the camp, and a talk of officers arose in connection with the response, and subsided.  The carriage was in the shadows of the fire.  In a little while Luigi and the driver began putting the horses to, and she saw Count Karl and Weisspriess go up to Luigi, who declared loudly that it was time.  The woman inside was aroused.  Weisspriess helped to drag her out.  Luigi kept making much noise, and apologized for it by saying that he desired to awaken his master, who was stretched in a secure circle among the Tyrolese.  Presently Vittoria beheld the woman’s arms thrown out free; the next minute they were around the body of Weisspriess, and a shrewd cry issued from Count Karl.  Shots rang from the outposts; the Tyrolese sprang to arms; “Sandra!” was shouted by Pericles; and once more she heard the ‘Venite fratelli!’ of the bull’s voice, and a stream of volunteers dashed at the Tyrolese with sword and dagger and bayonet.  The Austro-Italians stood in a crescent line—­the ominous form of incipient military insubordination.  Their officers stormed at them, and called for Count Karl and for Weisspriess.  The latter replied like a man stifling, but Count Karl’s voice was silent.