f the letter. Carlo
read it eagerly and cast it aside. It dealt in ideas and abstract
phraseology; he could get nothing of it between his impatient teeth; he
was reduced to a blank wonder at the reason for her sending it on to him.
It said indeed--and so far it seemed to have a meaning for her:

'No backward step. We can bear to fall; we cannot afford to draw back.'

And again:

'Remember that these uprisings are the manifested pulsations of the heart
of your country, so that none shall say she is a corpse, and knowing that
she lives, none shall say that she deserves not freedom. It is the
protest of her immortal being against her impious violator.'

Evidently the Chief had heard nothing of the counterstroke of Barto
Rizzo, and of Count Medole's miserable weakness: but how, thought Carlo,
how can a mind like Vittoria's find matter to suit her in such sentences?
He asked himself the question, forgetting that a little time gone by,
while he was aloof from the tumult and dreaming of it, this airy cloudy
language and every symbolism, had been strong sustaining food, a vital
atmosphere, to him. He did not for the moment (though by degrees he
recovered his last night's conception of her) understand that among the
noble order of women there is, when they plunge into strife, a craving
for idealistic truths, which men are apt, under the heat and hurry of
their energies, to put aside as stars that are meant merely for shining.

His mother perused the letter--holding it out at arm's length--and laid
it by; Luciano likewise. Countess Ammiani was an aristocrat: the tone and
style of the writing were distasteful to her. She allowed her son's
judgement of the writer to stand for her own, feeling that she could
surrender little prejudices in favour of one who appeared to hate the
Austrians so mortally. On the other hand, she defended Count Medole. Her
soul shrank at the thought of the revolution being yielded up to
theorists and men calling themselves men of the people--a class of men to
whom Paolo her soldier-husband's aversion had always been formidably
pronounced. It was an old and a wearisome task for Carlo to explain to
her that the times were changed and the necessities of the hour different
since the day when his father conspired and fought for freedom. Yet he
could not gainsay her when she urged that the nobles should be elected to
lead, if they consented to lead; for if they did not lead, were they not
excluded from the mo