above a slaughtered husband, but, unlike Laura, Marcellina Ammiani had
not buried her heart with him. Her heart and all her energies had been
his while he lived; from the visage of death it turned to her son. She
had accepted the passion for Italy from Paolo; she shared it with Carlo.
Italian girls of that period had as little passion of their own as
flowers kept out of sunlight have hues. She had given her son to her
country with that intensely apprehensive foresight of a mother's love
which runs quick as Eastern light from the fervour of the devotion to the
remote realization of the hour of the sacrifice, seeing both in one.
Other forms of love, devotion in other bosoms, may be deluded, but hers
will not be. She sees the sunset in the breast of the springing dawn.
Often her son Carlo stood a ghost in her sight. With this haunting
prophetic vision, it was only a mother, who was at the same time a
supremely noble woman, that could feel all human to him notwithstanding.
Her heart beat thick and fast when Carlo and Luciano entered the morning-
room where she sat, and stopped to salute her in turn.

'Well?' she said without betraying anxiety or playing at carelessness.

Carlo answered, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. I think
that's the language of peaceful men.'

'You are to be peaceful men to-morrow, my Carlo?'

'The thing is in Count Medole's hands,' said Luciano; 'and he is
constitutionally of our Agostino's opinion that we are bound to wait till
the Gods kick us into action; and, as Agostino says, Medole has raised
himself upon our shoulders so as to be the more susceptible to their
wishes when they blow a gale.'