s perfect. I
detest conspiracies, but we must use what weapons we can, and be Old
Mole, if they trample us in the earth. Once up, we have Turin to back
us. This I know. We shall have nothing but the Tedeschi to manage: and
if they beat us in cavalry, it's certain that they can't rely on their
light horse. The Magyars would break in a charge. We know that they
will. As for the rest:--

'Soldati settentrionali,
Come sarebbe Boemi a Croati,'

we are a match for them! Artillery we shall get. The Piedmontese are mad
for the signal. Come; sit and eat. The air seems dead down in this quiet
country; we're out of the stream. I must rush up to London to breathe
and then we won't lose a moment. We shall be in Italy in four days. Four
days, my Sandra! And Italy going to be free; Georgey, I'm fasting. And
you will see all your old friends. All? Good God! No!--not all! Their
blood shall nerve us. The Austrian thinks he wastes us by slaughter.
With every dead man he doubles the life of the living! Am I talking like
a foreigner, Sandra mia? My child, you don't eat! And I, who dreamed
last night that I looked out over Novara from the height of the Col di
Colma, and saw the plain under a red shadow from a huge eagle!"

Merthyr laughed, swinging round his arm. Emilia continued staring at him
as at a man transformed, while Georgiana asked: "May Marini's letter be
seen?" Her visage had become firm and set in proportion as her brother's
excitement increased.

"Eat, my Sandra! eat!" called Merthyr, who was himself eating with a
campaigning appetite.

Georgiana laid down the letter folded under Merthyr's fingers, keeping
her hand on it till he grew alive to her meaning, that it should be put
away.

"Marini is vague about artillery," she murmured.

"Vague!" echoed Merthyr. "Say prudent. If he said we could lay hands on
fifty pieces, then distrust him!"

"God grant that this be not another pit for further fruitless
bloodshed!" was the interjection standing in Georgiana's eyes, and then
she dropped them pensively, while Merthyr recounted the patient schemes
that had led to this hour, the unuttered anxieties and the bursting
hopes.

Still Emilia kept her distressfully unenthusiastic looks turned from one
to the other, though her Italy was the theme. She did not eat, but had
dropped one hand flat on her plate, looking almost idiotic. She heard
of Italy as of a distant place, known to her in ancient years. Merthyr's
transforma