less scrupulous in his course, possibly, and less remorseful, than
revolutionary Generals. His smile was quite unclouded, and came softly
as a curve in water. It seemed to flow with, and to pass in and out of,
his thoughts, to be a part of his emotion and his meaning when it shone
transiently full. For as he had an orbed mind, so had he an orbed
nature. The passions were absolutely in harmony with the intelligence.
He had the English manner; a remarkable simplicity contrasting with the
demonstrative outcries and gesticulations of his friends when they joined
him on the height. Calling them each by name, he received their caresses
and took their hands; after which he touched the old man's shoulder.

"Agostino, this has breathed you?"

"It has; it has, my dear and best one!" Agostino replied. "But here is a
good market-place for air. Down below we have to scramble for it in the
mire. The spies are stifling down below. I don't know my own shadow. I
begin to think that I am important. Footing up a mountain corrects the
notion somewhat. Yonder, I believe, I see the Grisons, where Freedom
sits. And there's the Monte della Disgrazia. Carlo Alberto should be on
the top of it, but he is invisible. I do not see that Unfortunate."

"No," said Carlo Ammiani, who chimed to his humour more readily than the
rest, and affected to inspect the Grisons' peak through a diminutive
opera-glass. "No, he is not there."

"Perhaps, my son, he is like a squirrel, and is careful to run up t'other
side of the stem. For he is on that mountain; no doubt of it can exist
even in the Boeotian mind of one of his subjects; myself, for example.
It will be an effulgent fact when he gains the summit."