on the eve of a
thaw. That deadly cold and awful silence which had lasted ten years, was
about to disappear, to be swept away amidst the clamour of strife and
destruction, by new currents, warm and brilliant. Carlascia was playing
the braggart, and would talk to his guards (who made no comments) of an
impending military expedition to Turin. Signor Puttini had never
entirely recovered from the shock he had received on that memorable
morning; and the lawyer's treachery, the tragic end of the top-hat, the
comic end of the tail-coat, had deeply affected him, and he had lost
all respect for patriots. Dr. Aliprandi was already in Piedmont. A
veteran subaltern of the army of Napoleon, who lived in Puria, was
secretly furbishing up his old uniform, with the intention of presenting
himself before the French Emperor when he should enter Italy. Whenever
Intrioni, the curate of Castello, met Don Giuseppe Costabarbieri, he
would remind him of a certain rhyme of 1796 which he, Don Giuseppe, had
gone about repeating in 1848, but which he had soon hidden away again.

The mighty Ulans
Came here from Hungary,
But the Frenchman's arms
Made them all promptly flee!

Don Giuseppe, greatly alarmed, would cry: "Hush! Hush!"

Meanwhile the violets continued to grow as peacefully on the slopes of
Valsolda as if nothing were happening. On the evening of the twentieth
of February, Luisa carried a bunch to the cemetery. She was still in
mourning. Pallid and emaciated, her eyes had become larger, and there
were many silver threads in her hair. She seemed to have grown twenty
years older since her bereavement. Upon leaving the cemetery she turned
towards Albogasio, and joined some women from Oria, who were going to
recite the Rosary in the parish church. She no longer seemed the same
dark phantom that had laid the violets on Maria's grave. She talked
calmly, almost gaily, first with one, then with another of the women;
inquired after a sick animal, praised and caressed a little girl who was
going to the Rosary with her grandmother, and told her to sit very still
in church, as her Maria had always done. She said this and mentioned
Maria very quietly, but the women shuddered and were filled with
astonishment, for Luisa herself never went to church now. She asked one
of the girls if the young men were going to act a play as usual, and if
her brother was to take part. Upon receiving an answer in the
affirmative she offered to help wi