Barto Rizzo had chosen his own way, none knew whither.  Carlo, Angelo, Marco Sana, and a sharply-wounded Brescian lad, conceived the scheme of traversing the South Tyrol mountain-range toward Friuli, whence Venice, the still-breathing republic, might possibly be gained.  They carried the boy in turn till his arms drooped long down, and when they knew the soul was out of him they buried him in snow, and thought him happy.  It was then that Marco Sana took his death for an omen, and decided them to turn their heads once more for Switzerland; telling them that the boy, whom he last had carried, uttered “Rome” with the flying breath.  Angelo said that Sana would get to Rome; and Carlo, smiling on Angelo, said they were to die twins though they had been born only cousins.  The language they had fallen upon was mystical, scarce intelligible to other than themselves.  On a clear morning, with the Swiss peaks in sight, they were condemned by want of food to quit their fastness for the valley.

Vittoria read the faces of the mornings as human creatures base tried to gather the sum of their destinies off changing surfaces, fair not meaning fair, nor black black, but either the mask upon the secret of God’s terrible will; and to learn it and submit, was the spiritual burden of her motherhood, that the child leaping with her heart might live.  Not to hope blindly, in the exceeding anxiousness of her passionate love, nor blindly to fear; not to bet her soul fly out among the twisting chances; not to sap her great maternal duty by affecting false stoical serenity:—­to nurse her soul’s strength, and suckle her womanly weakness with the tsars which are poison—­when repressed; to be at peace with a disastrous world for the sake of the dependent life unborn; lay such pure efforts she clung to God.  Soft dreams of sacred nuptial tenderness, tragic images, wild pity, were like phantoms encircling her, plucking at her as she went, lest they were beneath her feet, and she kept them from lodging between her breasts.  The thought that her husband, though he should have perished, was not a life lost if their child lived, sustained her powerfully.  It seemed to whisper at times almost as it were Carlo’s ghost breathing in her ears:  “On thee!” On her the further duty devolved; and she trod down hope, lest it should build her up and bring a shock to surprise her fortitude; she put back alarm.

The mountains and the valleys scarce had names for her understanding; they were but a scene where the will of her Maker was at work.  Rarely has a soul been so subjected to its own force.  She certainly had the image of God in her mind.

Yet when her ayes lingered on any mountain gorge, the fate of her husband sang within it a strange chant, ending in a key that rang sounding through all her being, and seemed to question heaven.  This music framed itself; it was still when she looked at the shrouded mountain-tops.  A shadow meting sunlight on the long green slopes aroused it, and it hummed above the tumbling hasty foam, and penetrated hanging depths of foliage, sad-hued rock-clefts, dark green ravines; it became convulsed where the mountain threw forward in a rushing upward line against the sky, there to be severed at the head by cloud.  It was silent among the vines.