manoeuvred upon the green plains beyond the river.

I was all wonder-stricken and fascinated by the sight. My blood was
quickened by the brazen notes of their trumpets, and to balance a pike in
my hands was to procure me the oddest and most exquisite thrills that I had
known. But my mother, perceiving with alarm the delight afforded me by
such warlike matters, withdrew me so that I might see as little as possible
of it all.

And there followed scenes between her and my father of which hazy
impressions linger in my memory. No longer was she a mute statue, enduring
with fearful stoicism his harsh upbraidings. She was turned into a
suppliant, now fierce, now lachrymose; by her prayers, by her prophecies of
the evil that must attend his ungodly aims, she strove with all her poor,
feeble might to turn him from the path of revolt to which he had set his
foot.

And he would listen now in silence, his face grim and sardonic; and when
from very weariness the flow of her inspired oratory began to falter, he
would deliver ever the same answer.

"It is you who have driven me to this; and this is no more than a
beginning. You have made a vow--an outrageous votive offering of something
that is not yours to bestow. That vow you cannot break, you say. Be it
so. But I must seek a remedy elsewhere. To save my son from the Church to
which you would doom him, I will, ere I have done, tear down the Church and
make an end of it in Italy."

And at that she would shrivel up before him with a little moan of horror,
taking her poor white face in her hands.