he Valtelline by Val Viola, up to Ponte in the Engadine, with
orders to seize her if he could see her, and have her conveyed to Cles,
in Tyrol. Vittoria being only by the gentlest interpretation of her
conduct not under interdict, an unscrupulous Imperial officer might
in those military times venture to employ the gendarmerie for his own
purposes, if he could but give a plausible colour of devotion to the
Imperial interests.

The chasseur sped lamentingly back, and Weisspriess, taking a guide from
the skirting hamlet above Edolo, quitted the Val Camonica, climbed
the Tonale, and reached Vermiglio in the branch valley of that name,
scientifically observing the features of the country as he went.
At Vermiglio he encountered a brother officer of one of his former
regiments, a fat major on a tour of inspection, who happened to be a
week behind news of the army, and detained him on the pretext of helping
him on his car--a mockery that drove Weisspriess to the perpetual
reply, 'You are my superior officer,' which reduced the major to ask him
whether he had been degraded a step. As usual, Weisspriess was pushed to
assert his haughtiness, backed by the shadow of his sword. 'I am a man
with a family,' said the major, modestly. 'Then I shall call you
my superior officer while they allow you to remain so,' returned
Weisspriess, who scorned a married soldier.

'I aspired to the Staff once myself,' said the major. 'Unfortunately, I
grew in girth--the wrong way for ambition. I digest, I assimilate with
a fatal ease. Stout men are doomed to the obscurer paths. You may quote
Napoleon as a contrary instance. I maintain positively that his day was
over, his sun was eclipsed, when his valet had to loosen the buckles of
his waistcoat and breech. Now, what do you say?'

'I say,' Weisspriess replied, 'that if there's a further depreciation of
the paper currency, we shall none of us have much chance of digesting or
assimilating either--if I know at all what those processes mean.'

'Our good Lombard cow is not half squeezed enough,' observed the major,
confidentially in tone. 'When she makes a noise--quick! the pail at
her udders and work away; that's my advice. What's the verse?--our
Zwitterwitz's, I mean; the Viennese poet:--

"Her milk is good-the Lombard cow;
Let her be noisy when she pleases
But if she kicks the pail, I vow,
We'll make her used to sharper squeezes:
We'll write her mighty deeds