intelligence upon Carlo and Luciano, when these two passed along the
crowd. A gloom of hoarded hatred was visible in the mass of faces, ready
to spring fierily.

Arms were in the city. With hatred to prompt the blow, with arms
to strike, so much dishonour to avenge, we need not wonder that these
youths beheld the bit of liberty in prospect magnified by their mighty
obfuscating ardour, like a lantern in a fog. Reason did not act. They
were in such a state when just to say 'Italia! Italia!' gave them nerve
to match an athlete. So, the parading of Austria, the towering athlete,
failed of its complete lesson of intimidation, and only ruffled the
surface of insurgent hearts. It seemed, and it was, an insult to the
trodden people, who read it as a lesson for cravens: their instinct
commonly hits the bell. They felt that a secure supremacy would not
have paraded itself: so they divined indistinctly that there was weakness
somewhere in the councils of the enemy. When the show had vanished,
their spirits hung pausing, like the hollow air emptied of big sound,
and reacted. Austria had gained little more by her display than the
conscientious satisfaction of the pedagogue who lifts the rod to advise
intending juvenile culprits how richly it can be merited and how poor
will be their future grounds of complaint.

But before Austria herself had been taught a lesson she conceived that
she had but one man and his feeble instruments, and occasional frenzies,
opposed to her, him whom we saw on the Motterone, which was ceasing to be
true; though it was true that the whole popular movement flowed from that
one man. She observed travelling sparks in the embers of Italy, and
crushed them under her heel, without reflecting that a vital heat must be
gathering where the spots of fire run with such a swiftness. It was her
belief that if she could seize that one man, whom many of the younger