retired orderly.  Cavalry curved like a flickering scimetar in their rear; artillery plodded to its further station.  Innumerable tiny smoke-puffs then preceded a fresh advance of infantry.  The enemy were on the hills and looked mightier, for they were revealed among red flashes of their guns, and stood partly visible above clouds of hostile smoke and through clouds of their own, which grasped viscously by the skirts of the hills.  Yet it seemed a strife of insects, until, one by one, soldiers who had gone into yonder white pit for the bloody kiss of death, and had got it on their faces, were borne by Vittoria and Laura knelt in this horrid stream of mortal anguish to give succour from their stores in the carriage.  Their natural emotions were distraught.  They welcomed the sight of suffering thankfully, for the poor blotted faces were so glad at sight of them.  Torture was their key to the reading of the battle.  They gazed on the field no longer, but let the roaring wave of combat wash up to them what it would.

The hill behind Pastrengo was twice stormed.  When the bluecoats first fell back, a fine charge of Piedmontese horse cleared the slopes for a second effort, and they went up and on, driving the enemy from hill to hill.  The Adige was crossed by the Austrians under cover of Tyrolese rifleshots.

Then, with Beppo at their heels, bearing water, wine, and brandy, the women walked in the paths of carnage, and saw the many faces of death.  Laura whispered strangely, “How light-hearted they look!” The wounded called their comforters sweet names.  Some smoked and some sang, some groaned; all were quick to drink.  Their jokes at the dead were universal.  They twisted their bodies painfully to stick a cigar between dead lips, and besprinkle them with the last drops of liquor in their cups, laughing a benediction.  These scenes put grievous chains on Vittoria’s spirit, but Laura evidently was not the heavier for them.  Glorious Verona shone under the sunset as their own to come; Peschiera, on the blue lake, was in the hollow of their hands.  “Prizes worth any quantity of blood,” said Laura.  Vittoria confessed that she had seen enough of blood, and her aspect provoked Laura to utter, “For God’s sake, think of something miserable;—­cry, if you can!”

Vittoria’s underlip dropped sickly with the question, “Why?”

Laura stated the physical necessity with Italian naivete.

“If I can,” said Vittoria, and blinked to get a tear; but laughter helped as well to relieve her, and it came on their return to the carriage.  They found the spy Luigi sitting beside the driver.  He informed them that Antonio-Pericles had been in the track of the army ever since their flight from Turin; daily hurrying off with whip of horses at the sound of cannon-shot, and gradually stealing back to the extreme rear.  This day he had flown from Oliosi to Cavriani, and was, perhaps, retracing his way already as before, on fearful toe-tips.  Luigi acted the caution of one who stepped blindfolded across hot iron plates.  Vittoria, without a spark of interest, asked why the Signor Antonio should be following the army.