Herr Captain’s service, and got his money for having sighted Vittoria and seen double.  Weisspriess decided in his mind that Angelo had now separated from her (or rather, she from him) for safety.  He thought it very probable that she would likewise fly to Switzerland.  Yet, knowing that there was the attraction of many friends for her at Meran, he conceived that he should act more prudently by throwing himself on that line, and he sped Jacob Baumwalder along the Valtelline by Val Viola, up to Ponte in the Engadine, with orders to seize her if he could see her, and have her conveyed to Cles, in Tyrol.  Vittoria being only by the gentlest interpretation of her conduct not under interdict, an unscrupulous Imperial officer might in those military times venture to employ the gendarmerie for his own purposes, if he could but give a plausible colour of devotion to the Imperial interests.

The chasseur sped lamentingly back, and Weisspriess, taking a guide from the skirting hamlet above Edolo, quitted the Val Camonica, climbed the Tonale, and reached Vermiglio in the branch valley of that name, scientifically observing the features of the country as he went.  At Vermiglio he encountered a brother officer of one of his former regiments, a fat major on a tour of inspection, who happened to be a week behind news of the army, and detained him on the pretext of helping him on his car—­a mockery that drove Weisspriess to the perpetual reply, ’You are my superior officer,’ which reduced the major to ask him whether he had been degraded a step.  As usual, Weisspriess was pushed to assert his haughtiness, backed by the shadow of his sword.  ’I am a man with a family,’ said the major, modestly.  ’Then I shall call you my superior officer while they allow you to remain so,’ returned Weisspriess, who scorned a married soldier.

‘I aspired to the Staff once myself,’ said the major.  ’Unfortunately, I grew in girth—­the wrong way for ambition.  I digest, I assimilate with a fatal ease.  Stout men are doomed to the obscurer paths.  You may quote Napoleon as a contrary instance.  I maintain positively that his day was over, his sun was eclipsed, when his valet had to loosen the buckles of his waistcoat and breech.  Now, what do you say?’

‘I say,’ Weisspriess replied, ’that if there’s a further depreciation of the paper currency, we shall none of us have much chance of digesting or assimilating either—­if I know at all what those processes mean.’

‘Our good Lombard cow is not half squeezed enough,’ observed the major, confidentially in tone.  ’When she makes a noise—­quick! the pail at her udders and work away; that’s my advice.  What’s the verse?—­our Zwitterwitz’s, I mean; the Viennese poet:—­

       “Her milk is good-the Lombard cow;
        Let her be noisy when she pleases
        But if she kicks the pail, I vow,
        We’ll make her used to sharper squeezes: 
        We’ll write her mighty deeds in cheeses: 
        (That is, if she yields milk enow).”