nction with certain friends of the signora, the count worked
diligently for the immediate restitution of the estates. He was ably
seconded by the young princess of Schyll-Weilingen,--by marriage
countess of Fohrendorf, duchess of Graatli, in central Germany, by which
title she passed,--an Austrian princess; she who had loved Giacomo, and
would have given all for him, and who now loved his widow. The extreme
and painful difficulty was that the Signora Piaveni made no concealment
of her abhorrence of the House of Austria, and hatred of Austrian rule
in Italy. The spirit of her dead husband had come to her from the grave,
and warmed a frame previously indifferent to anything save his personal
merits. It had been covertly communicated to her that if she performed
due submission to the authorities, and lived for six months in good
legal, that is to say, nonpatriotic odour, she might hope to have the
estates. The duchess had obtained this mercy for her, and it was much;
for Giacomo's scheme of revolt had been conceived with a subtlety of
genius, and contrived on a scale sufficient to incense any despotic lord
of such a glorious milch-cow as Lombardy. Unhappily the signora was more
inspired by the remembrance of her husband than by consideration for
her children. She received disaffected persons: she subscribed her money
ostentatiously for notoriously patriotic purposes; and she who, in her
father's Como villa, had been a shy speechless girl, nothing more than
beautiful, had become celebrated for her public letters, and the ardour
of declamation against the foreigner which characterized her style. In
the face of such facts, the estates continued to be withheld from her
governance. Austria could do that: she could wreak her spite against
the woman, but she respected her own law even in a conquered land: the
estates were not confiscated, and not absolutely sequestrated; and,
indeed, money coming from them had been sent to her for the education
of her children. It lay in unopened official envelopes, piled one upon
another, quarterly remittances, horrible as blood of slaughter in her
sight. Count Serabiglione made a point of counting the packets always
within the first five minutes of a visit to his daughter. He said
nothing, but was careful to see to the proper working of the lock of
the cupboard where the precious deposits were kept, and sometimes in
forgetfulness he carried off the key. When his daughter reclaimed it,
she observe