d suppose him to be a boy: and when
he was so thirsty and dry-lipped that though Mina was bending over him,
just fresh from Mariazell, he had not the heart to kiss her or lift an
arm to her!--His horse was off with him-whither?--He was going down with
a company of infantry in the Gulf of Venice: cards were in his hands,
visible, though he could not feel them, and as the vessel settled for
the black plunge, the cards flushed all honours, and his mother shook
her head at him: he sank, and heard Mina sighing all the length of the
water to the bottom, which grated and gave him two horrid shocks of
pain: and he cried for a doctor, and admitted that his horse had managed
to throw him; but wine was the cure, brandy was the cure, or water,
water! Water was sprinkled on his forehead and put to his lips.

He thanked Vittoria by name, and imagined himself that General, serving
under old Wurmser, of whom the tale is told that being shot and lying
grievously wounded on the harsh Rivoli ground, he obtained the help of
a French officer in as bad case as himself, to moisten his black tongue
and write a short testamentary document with his blood, and for a way of
returning thanks to the Frenchman, he put down among others, the name
of his friendly enemy's widow; whereupon both resigned their hearts to
death; but the Austrian survived to find the sad widow and espouse her.

His mutterings were full of gratitude, showing a vividly transient
impression to what was about him, that vanished in a narrow-headed
flight through clouds into lands of memory. It pained him, he said, that
he could not offer her marriage; but he requested that when his chin
was shaved his moustache should be brushed up out of the way of the
clippers, for he and all his family were conspicuous for the immense
amount of life which they had in them, and his father had lain
six-and-thirty hours bleeding on the field of Wagram, and had yet
survived to beget a race as hearty as himself:--'Old Austria! thou grand
old Austria!'

The smile was proud, though faint, which accompanied the apostrophe,
addressed either to his country or to his father's personification
of it; it was inexpressibly pathetic to Vittoria, who understood his
'Oesterreich,' and saw the weak and helpless bleeding man, with his
eyeballs working under the lids, and the palms of his hands stretched
out open-weak as a corpse, but conquering death.

The arrival of Jacopo and Johann furnished help to carry h