’Little mother, little sister, little sweetheart, ‘ade! ade!’ My little sweetheart, your meadow is half-way up the mountain; it’s such a green spot on the eyeballs of a roving boy! and the chapel just above it, I shall see it as I’ve seen it a thousand times; and the cloud hangs near it, and moves to the door and enters, for it is an angel, not a cloud; a white angel gone in to pray for Katerlein and me:  Little mother, little sister, little sweetheart, ‘ade! ade!’ Keep single, Katerlein, as long as you can:  as long as you can hold out, keep single:  ‘ade!’’

Fifteen hundred men and six guns were counted as they marched on to one gate.

Barto Rizzo, with Battista and his wife on each side of him, were among the spectators.  The black cock’s feathers of the Tyrolese were still fluttering up the Corso, when the woman said, ’I ’ve known the tail of a regiment get through the gates without having to show paper.’

Battista thereupon asked Barto whether he would try that chance.  The answer was a vacuous shake of the head, accompanied by an expression of unutterable mournfulness.  ‘There’s no other way,’ pursued Battista, ’unless you jump into the Adige, and swim down half-a-mile under water; and cats hate water—­eh, my comico?’

He conceived that the sword-cut had rendered Barto imbecile, and pulled his hat down his forehead, and patted his shoulder, and bade him have cheer, patronizingly:  but women do not so lightly lose their impression of a notable man.  His wife checked him.  Barto had shut his eyes, and hung swaying between them, as in drowsiness or drunkenness.  Like his body, his faith was swaying within him.  He felt it borne upon the reeling brain, and clung to it desperately, calling upon chance to aid him; for he was weak, incapable of a physical or mental contest, and this part of his settled creed that human beings alone failed the patriotic cause as instruments, while circumstances constantly befriended it—­was shocked by present events.  The image of Vittoria, the traitress, floated over the soldiery marching on Milan through her treachery.  Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible.  He had to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened, in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies undisturbed—­if only men will have the faith, and will teach themselves to know that the inspiration must come, and will counsel them justly.  This was a part of Barto Rizzo’s sustaining creed; nor did he lose his grasp of it in the torment and the darkness of his condition.