fore-finger, the features of the mountain were stamped on them, and with
hunger they lost pride, and with solitude laughter; with endless fleeing
they lost the aim of flight; some became desperate, a few craven.
Companionship was broken before they parted in three bodies, commanded
severally by Colonel Corte, Carlo Ammiani, and Barto Rizzo. Corte
reached the plains, masked by the devotion of Carlo's band, who lured
the soldiery to a point and drew a chase, while Corte passed the
line and pushed on for Switzerland. Carlo told off his cousin Angelo
Guidascarpi in the list of those following Corte; but when he fled up
to the snows again, he beheld Angelo spectral as the vapour on a jut
of rock awaiting him. Barto Rizzo had chosen his own way, none knew
whither. Carlo, Angelo, Marco Sana, and a sharply-wounded Brescian lad,
conceived the scheme of traversing the South Tyrol mountain-range toward
Friuli, whence Venice, the still-breathing republic, might possibly be
gained. They carried the boy in turn till his arms drooped long down,
and when they knew the soul was out of him they buried him in snow, and
thought him happy. It was then that Marco Sana took his death for an
omen, and decided them to turn their heads once more for Switzerland;
telling them that the boy, whom he last had carried, uttered "Rome" with
the flying breath. Angelo said that Sana would get to Rome; and Carlo,
smiling on Angelo, said they were to die twins though they had been born
only cousins. The language they had fallen upon was mystical, scarce
intelligible to other than themselves. On a clear morning, with the
Swiss peaks in sight, they were condemned by want of food to quit their
fastness for the valley.

Vittoria read the faces of the mornings as human creatures base tried
to gather the sum of their destinies off changing surfaces, fair not
meaning fair, nor black black, but either the mask upon the secret
of God's terrible will; and to learn it and submit, was the spiritual
burden of her motherhood, that the child leaping with her heart
might live. Not to hope blindly, in the exceeding anxiousness of her
passionate love, nor blindly to fear; not to bet her soul fly out among
the twisting chances; not to sap her great maternal duty by affecting
false stoical serenity:--to nurse her soul's strength, and suckle her
womanly weakness with the tsars which are poison--when repressed; to
be at peace with a disastrous world for the sake of the dependen