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 rest:  she might sing when she wanted money.  A letter recently received from Mr. Pericles said that Italy was her child’s ruin, and she hoped Emilia was ready to do as he advised, and hurry to England, where singing did not upset people, and people lived like real Christians, not——­Vittoria flapped her hand, and would not hear of the unchristian crimes of the South.  As regarded the expected defence of Milan, the little woman said, that if it brought on a bombardment, she would call it unpardonable wickedness, and only hoped that her daughter would repent.

Zotti stood by, interpreting the English to himself by tones.  “The amiable donnina is not of our persuasion,” he observed.  “She remains dissatisfied with patriotic Milan.  I have exhibited to her my dabs of bread through all the processes of making and baking.  It is in vain.  She rejects analogy.  She is wilful as a principessina:  ’Tis so! ’tis not so! ’tis my will! be silent, thou!  Signora, I have been treated in that way by your excellent mother.”

“Zotti has not been paid for three weeks, and he certainly has not mentioned it or looked it, I will say, Emilia.”

“Zotti has had something to think of during the last three weeks,” said Vittoria, touching him kindly on the arm.

The confectioner lifted his fingers and his big brown eyes after them, expressive of the unutterable thoughts.  He informed her that he had laid in a stock of flour, in the expectation that Carlo Alberto would defend the city:  The Milanese were ready to aid him, though some, as Zotti confessed, had ceased to effervesce; and a great number who were perfectly ready to fight regarded his tardy appeal to Italian patriotism very coldly.  Zotti set out in person to discover Giacinta.  The girl could hardly fetch her breath when she saw her mistress.  She was in Laura’s service, and said that Laura had brought a wounded Englishman from the field of Custozza.  Vittoria hurried to Laura, with whom she found Merthyr, blue-white as a corpse, having been shot through the body.  His sister was in one of the Lombard hamlets, unaware of his fall; Beppo had been sent to her.