ointing at the dusty land
from the windows of the inn. On first seeing her he gasped like one who
has recovered a lost thing. To Laura he was a fool; but Vittoria enjoyed
his wildest outbursts, and her half-sincere humility encouraged him to
think that he had captured her at last. He enlarged on the perils
surrounding her voice in dusty bellowing Lombardy, and on the ardour of
his friendship in exposing himself to perils as tremendous, that he might
rescue her. While speaking he pricked a lively ear for the noise of guns,
hearing a gun in everything, and jumping to the window with horrid
imprecations. His carriage was horsed at the doors below. Let the horses
die, he said, let the coachman have sun-stroke. Let hundreds perish, if
Vittoria would only start in an hour-in two--to-night--to-morrow.

"Because, do you see,"--he turned to Laura and Georgiana, submitting to
the vexatious necessity of seeming reasonable to these creatures,--"she
is a casket for one pearl. It is only one, but it is ONE, mon Dieu! and
inscrutable heaven, mesdames, has made the holder of it mad. Her voice
has but a sole skin; it is not like a body; it bleeds to death at a
scratch. A spot on the pearl, and it is perished--pfoof! Ah, cruel thing!
impious, I say. I have watched, I have reared her. Speak to me of
mothers! I have cherished her for her splendid destiny--to see it go
down, heels up, among quarrels of boobies! Yes; we have war in Italy.
Fight! Fight in this beautiful climate that you may be dominated by a
blue coat, not by a white coat. We are an intelligent race; we are a
civilized people; we will fight for that. What has a voice of the very
heavens to do with your fighting? I heard it first in England, in a
firwood, in a month of Spring, at night-time, fifteen miles and a quarter
from the city of London--oh, city of peace! Sandra you will come there. I
give you thousands additional to the sum stipulated. You have no rival.
Sandra Belloni! no rival, I say"--he invoked her in English, "and you
hear--you, to be a draggle-tail vivandiere wiz a brandy-bottle at your
hips and a reputation going like ze brandy. Ah! pardon, mesdames; but did
mankind ever see a frenzy like this girl's? Speak, Sandra. I could cry it
like Michiella to Camilla--Speak!"

Vittoria compelled him to despatch his horses to stables. He had relays
of horses at war-prices between Castiglione and Pavia, and a retinue of
servants; nor did he hesitate to inform the ladies that