He enlarged on the perils
surrounding her voice in dusty bellowing Lombardy, and on the ardour
of his friendship in exposing himself to perils as tremendous, that he
might rescue her. While speaking he pricked a lively ear for the noise
of guns, hearing a gun in everything, and jumping to the window with
horrid imprecations. His carriage was horsed at the doors below. Let
the horses die, he said, let the coachman have sun-stroke. Let
hundreds perish, if Vittoria would only start in an hour-in
two--to-night--to-morrow.

"Because, do you see,"--he turned to Laura and Georgiana, submitting to
the vexatious necessity of seeming reasonable to these creatures,--"she
is a casket for one pearl. It is only one, but it is ONE, mon Dieu! and
inscrutable heaven, mesdames, has made the holder of it mad. Her voice
has but a sole skin; it is not like a body; it bleeds to death at a
scratch. A spot on the pearl, and it is perished--pfoof! Ah, cruel
thing! impious, I say. I have watched, I have reared her. Speak to me
of mothers! I have cherished her for her splendid destiny--to see it go
down, heels up, among quarrels of boobies! Yes; we have war in Italy.
Fight! Fight in this beautiful climate that you may be dominated by a
blue coat, not by a white coat. We are an intelligent race; we are a
civilized people; we will fight for that. What has a voice of the very
heavens to do with your fighting? I heard it first in England, in
a firwood, in a month of Spring, at night-time, fifteen miles and a
quarter from the city of London--oh, city of peace! Sandra you will come
there. I give you thousands additional to the sum stipulated. You have
no rival. Sandra Belloni! no rival, I say"--he invoked her in English,
"and you hear--you, to be a draggle-tail vivandiere wiz a brandy-bottle
at your hips and a reputation going like ze brandy. Ah! pardon,
mesdames; but did mankind ever see a frenzy like this girl's? Speak,
Sandra. I could cry it like Michiella to Camilla--Speak!"

Vittoria compelled him to despatch his horses to stables. He had relays
of horses at war-prices between Castiglione and Pavia, and a retinue
of servants; nor did he hesitate to inform the ladies that, before
entrusting his person to the hazards of war, he had taken care to be
provided with safe-conduct passes for both armies, as befitted a prudent
man of peace--"or sense; it is one, mesdames."

Notwithstanding his terror at the guns, and disgust at the soldiery and
the bad