scia one of the historic
deeds of infamy. Many officers of the Imperial army perceived the shame
which it cast upon their colours, even in those intemperate hours, and
Karl Lenkenstein assumed the liberty of private friendship to go
complaining to the old Marshal, who was too true a soldier to condemn a
soldier in action, however strong his disapproval of proceedings. The
liberty assumed by Karl was excessive; he spoke out in the midst of
General officers as if his views were shared by them and the Marshal; and
his error was soon corrected; one after another reproached him, until the
Marshal, pitying his condition, sent him into his writing-closet, where
he lectured the youth on military discipline. It chanced that there
followed between them a question upon what the General in command at
Brescia would do with his prisoners; and hearing that they were subject
to the rigours of a court-martial, and if adjudged guilty, would
forthwith summarily be shot, Karl ventured to ask grace for Vittoria's
husband. He succeeded finally in obtaining his kind old Chief's promise
that Count Ammiani should be tried in Milan, and as the bearer of a paper
to that effect, he called on his sisters to get them or Wilfrid to convey
word to Vittoria of her husband's probable safety. He found Anna in a
swoon, and Lena and the duchess bending over her. The duchess's chasseur
Jacob Baumwalder Feckelwitz had been returning from Moran, when on the
Brescian high-road he met the spy Luigi, and acting promptly under the
idea that Luigi was always a pestilential conductor of detestable
correspondence, he attacked him, overthrew him, and ransacked him, and
bore the fruit of his sagacious exertions to his mistress in Milan; it
was Violetta d'Isorella's letter to Carlo Ammiani. "I have read it," the
duchess said; "contrary to any habits when letters are not addressed to
me. I bring it open to your sister Anna. She catches sight of one or two
names and falls down in the state in which you see her."

"Leave her to me," said Karl.

He succeeded in extracting from Anna hints of the fact that she had paid
a large sum of her own money to Countess d'Isorella for secrets connected
with the Bergamasc and Brescian rising. "We were under a mutual oath to
be silent, but if one has broken it the other cannot; so I confess it to
you, dearest good brother. I did this for my country at my personal
sacrifice."

Karl believed that he had a sister magnificent in soul. She