awaiting their experience of life; but a certain satisfaction was shown in her faint smile when her confessor lamented over Vittoria’s proud stony state of moral revolt.  She said to her accepted daughter, “I shall expect you to be prepared to espouse my son as soon as I have him by my side;” nor did Vittoria’s silent bowing of her face assure her that strict obedience was implied.  Precise words—­“I will,” and “I will not fail”—­were exacted.  The countess showed some emotion after Vittoria had spoken.  “Now, may God end this war quickly, if it is to go against us,” she exclaimed, trembling in her chair visibly a half-minute, with dropped eyelids and lips moving.

Carlo had sent word that he would join his mother as early as he was disengaged from active service, and meantime requested her to proceed to a villa on Lago Maggiore.  Vittoria obtained permission from the countess to order the route of the carriage through Milan, where she wished to take up her mother and her maid Giacinta.  For other reasons she would have avoided the city.  The thought of entering it was painful with the shrewdest pain.  Dante’s profoundly human line seemed branded on the forehead of Milan.

The morning was dark when they drove through the streets of Bergamo.  Passing one of the open places, Vittoria beheld a great concourse of volunteer youth and citizens, all of them listening to the voice of one who stood a few steps above them holding a banner.  She gave an outcry of bitter joy.  It was the Chief.  On one side of him was Agostino, in the midst of memorable heads that were unknown to her.  The countess refused to stay, though Vittoria strained her hands together in extreme entreaty that she might for a few moments hear what the others were hearing.  “I speak for my son, and I forbid it,” Countess Ammiani said.  Vittoria fell back and closed her eyes to cherish the vision.  All those faces raised to the one speaker under the dark sky were beautiful.  He had breathed some new glory of hope in them, making them shine beneath the overcast heavens, as when the sun breaks from an evening cloud and flushes the stems of a company of pine-trees.

Along the road to Milan she kept imagining his utterance until her heart rose with music.  A delicious stream of music, thin as poor tears, passed through her frame, like a life reviving.  She reached Milan in a mood to bear the idea of temporary defeat.  Music had forsaken her so long that celestial reassurance seemed to return with it.

Her mother was at Zotti’s, very querulous, but determined not to leave the house and the few people she knew.  She had, as she told her daughter, fretted so much on her account that she hardly knew whether she was glad to see her.  Tea, of course, she had given up all thoughts of; but now coffee was rising, and the boasted sweet bread of Lombardy was something to look at!  She trusted that Emilia would soon think of singing no more, and letting people