his efforts to convict this woman telling him she
deserved some punishment; and his suspicions being
unsatisfied, he resolved to keep them hungry upon her,
and return to Milan at once. As to the letter
itself, he purposed, since the harm in it was accomplished,
to send it back honourably to the lieutenant, till
finding it blood-stained, he declined to furnish the
gratification of such a sight to any Austrian sword.
For that reason, he copied it, while Battista’s
wife held double bandages tight round his head:
believing that the letter stood transcribed in a precisely
similar hand, he forwarded it to Lieutenant Pierson,
and then sank and swooned. Two days he lay incapable
and let his thoughts dance as they would. Information
was brought to him that the gates were strictly watched,
and that troops were starting for Milan. This
was in the dull hour antecedent to the dawn.
‘She is a traitress!’ he exclaimed, and
leaping from his bed, as with a brain striking fire,
screamed, ‘Traitress! traitress!’ Battista
and his wife had to fling themselves on him and gag
him, guessing him as mad. He spoke pompously
and theatrically; called himself the Eye of Italy,
and said that he must be in Milan, or Milan would
perish, because of the traitress: all with a
great sullen air of composure and an odd distension
of the eyelids. When they released him, he smiled
and thanked them, though they knew, that had he chosen,
he could have thrown off a dozen of them, such was
his strength. The woman went down on her knees
to him to get his consent that she should dress and
bandage his head afresh. The sound of the regimental
bugles drew him from the house, rather than any immediate
settled scheme to watch at the gates.
Artillery and infantry were in motion before sunrise,
from various points of the city, bearing toward the
Palio and Zeno gates, and the people turned out to
see them, for it was a march that looked like the beginning
of things. The soldiers had green twigs in their
hats, and kissed their hands good-humouredly to the
gazing crowd, shouting bits of verses:
’I’m off! I’m off! Farewell,
Mariandl! if I come back a sergeant-major or a Field-Marshal,
don’t turn up your nose at me: Swear you
will be faithful all the while; because, when a woman
swears, it’s a comfort, somehow: Farewell!
Squeeze the cow’s udders: I shall be thirsty
enough: You pretty wriggler! don’t you
know, the first cup of wine and the last, I shall
float your name on it? Luck to the lads we leave
behind! Farewell, Mariandl!’
The kindly fellows waved their hands and would take
no rebuff. The soldiery of Austria are kindlier
than most, until their blood is up. A Tyrolese
regiment passed, singing splendidly in chorus.
Songs of sentiment prevailed, but the traditions of
a soldier’s experience of the sex have informed
his ballads with strange touches of irony, that help
him to his (so to say) philosophy, which is recklessness.
The Tyroler’s ‘Katchen’ here, was
a saturnine Giulia, who gave him no response, either
of eye or lip.