The fall of Vicenza turned a tide that had overflowed its barriers with force enough to roll it to the Adriatic.  From that day it was as if a violent wind blew East over Lombardy; flood and wind breaking here and there a tree, bowing everything before them.  City, fortress, and battle-field resisted as the eddy whirls.  Venice kept her brave colours streaming aloft in a mighty grasp despite the storm, but between Venice and Milan there was this unutterable devastation,—­so sudden a change, so complete a reversal of the shield, that the Lombards were at first incredulous even in their agony, and set their faces against it as at a monstrous eclipse, as though the heavens were taking false oath of its being night when it was day.  From Vicenza and Rivoli, to Sommacampagna, and across Monte Godio to Custozza, to Volta on the right of the Mincio, up to the gates of Milan, the line of fire travelled, with a fantastic overbearing swiftness that, upon the map, looks like the zig-zag elbowing of a field-rocket.  Vicenza fell on the 11th of June; the Austrians entered Milan on the 6th of August.  Within that short time the Lombards were struck to the dust.

Countess Ammiani quitted Brescia for Bergamo before the worst had happened; when nothing but the king’s retreat upon the Lombard capital, after the good fight at Volta, was known.  According to the king’s proclamation the Piedmontese army was to defend Milan, and hope was not dead.  Vittoria succeeded in repressing all useless signs of grief in the presence of the venerable lady, who herself showed none, but simply recommended her accepted daughter to pray daily.  “I can neither confess nor pray,” Vittoria said to the priest, a comfortable, irritable ecclesiastic, long attached to the family, and little able to deal with this rebel before Providence, that would not let her swollen spirit be bled.  Yet she admitted to him that the countess possessed resources which she could find nowhere; and she saw the full beauty of such inimitable grave endurance.  Vittoria’s foolish trick of thinking for herself made her believe, nevertheless, that the countess suffered more than she betrayed, was less consoled than her spiritual comforter imagined.  She continued obstinate and unrepentant, saying, “If my punishment is to come, it will at least bring experience with it, and I shall know why I am punished.  The misery now is that I do not know, and do not see, the justice of the sentence.”

Countess Ammiani thought better of her case than the priest did; or she was more indulgent, or half indifferent.  This girl was Carlo’s choice; —­a strange choice, but the times were strange, and the girl was robust.  The channels of her own and her husband’s house were drying on all sides; the house wanted resuscitating.  There was promise that the girl would bear children of strong blood.  Countess Ammiani would not for one moment have allowed the spiritual welfare of the children to hang in dubitation,