“Can you look on his face and not see pure enthusiasm?”

“I see every feminine quality in it, my dear.”

“What can it be that he is wanting in?”

“Masculine ambition.”

“I am not defending him,” said Vittoria hastily.

“Not at all; and I am not attacking him.  I can excuse his dread of Republicanism.  I can fancy that there is reason for him just now to fear Republicanism worse than Austria.  Paris and Milan are two grisly phantoms before him.  These red spectres are born of earthquake, and are more given to shaking thrones than are hostile cannonshot.  Earthquakes are dreadfuller than common maladies to all of us.  Fortune may help him, but he has not the look of one who commands her.  The face is not aquiline.  There’s a light over him like the ray of a sickly star.”

“For that reason!” Vittoria burst out.

“Oh, for that reason we pity men, assuredly, my Sandra, but not kings.  Luckless kings are not generous men, and ungenerous men are mischievous kings.”

“But if you find him chivalrous and devoted; if he proves his noble intentions, why not support him?”

“Dandle a puppet, by all means,” said Laura.

Her intellect, not her heart, was harsh to the king; and her heart was not mistress of her intellect in this respect, because she beheld riding forth at the head of Italy one whose spirit was too much after the pattern of her supple, springing, cowering, impressionable sex, alternately ardent and abject, chivalrous and treacherous, and not to be confided in firmly when standing at the head of a great cause.

Aware that she was reading him very strictly by the letters of his past deeds, which were not plain history to Vittoria, she declared that she did not countenance suspicion in dealing with the king, and that it would be a delight to her to hear of his gallant bearing on the battle-field.  “Or to witness it, my Sandra, if that were possible;—­we two!  For, should he prove to be no General, he has the courage of his family.”

Vittoria took fire at this.  “What hinders our following the army?”

“The less baggage the better, my dear.”

“But the king said that my singing—­I have no right to think it myself.”  Vittoria concluded her sentence with a comical intention of humility.

“It was a pretty compliment,” said Laura.  “You replied that singing is a poor thing in time of war, and I agree with you.  We might serve as hospital nurses.”

“Why do we not determine?”

“We are only considering possibilities.”

“Consider the impossibility of our remaining quiet.”

“Fire that goes to flame is a waste of heat, my Sandra.”

The signora, however, was not so discreet as her speech.  On all sides there was uproar and movement.  High-born Italian ladies were offering their hands for any serviceable work.  Laura and Vittoria were not alone in the desire which was growing to be resolution to share the hardships of the soldiers, to cherish and encourage them, and by seeing, to have the supreme joy of feeling the blows struck at the common enemy.