Barto Rizzo, with Battista and his wife on each side of him, were among
the spectators. The black cock's feathers of the Tyrolese were still
fluttering up the Corso, when the woman said, 'I 've known the tail of a
regiment get through the gates without having to show paper.'

Battista thereupon asked Barto whether he would try that chance. The
answer was a vacuous shake of the head, accompanied by an expression
of unutterable mournfulness. 'There's no other way,' pursued Battista,
'unless you jump into the Adige, and swim down half-a-mile under water;
and cats hate water--eh, my comico?'

He conceived that the sword-cut had rendered Barto imbecile, and pulled
his hat down his forehead, and patted his shoulder, and bade him have
cheer, patronizingly: but women do not so lightly lose their impression
of a notable man. His wife checked him. Barto had shut his eyes, and
hung swaying between them, as in drowsiness or drunkenness. Like his
body, his faith was swaying within him. He felt it borne upon the
reeling brain, and clung to it desperately, calling upon chance to aid
him; for he was weak, incapable of a physical or mental contest, and
this part of his settled creed that human beings alone failed the
patriotic cause as instruments, while circumstances constantly
befriended it--was shocked by present events. The image of Vittoria,
the traitress, floated over the soldiery marching on Milan through her
treachery. Never had an Austrian force seemed to him so terrible. He had
to yield the internal fight, and let his faith sink and be blackened,
in order that his mind might rest supine, according to his remembered
system; for the inspiration which points to the right course does not
come during mental strife, but after it, when faith summons its agencies
undisturbed--if only men will have the faith, and will teach themselves
to know that the inspiration must come, and will counsel them justly.
This was a part of Barto Rizzo's sustaining creed; nor did he lose his
grasp of it in the torment and the darkness of his condition.

He heard English voices. A carriage had stopped almost in front of him.
A General officer was hat in hand, talking to a lady, who called him
uncle, and said that she had been obliged to decide to quit Verona on
account of her husband, to whom the excessive heat was unendurable.
Her husband, in the same breath, protested that the heat killed him.
He adorned the statement with all kinds of domestic and su