nobles and all the people acknowledged as their Chief--for he stood then
without a rival in his task--she would have the neck of conspiracy in her
angry grasp. Had she caught him, the conspiracy for Italian freedom
would not have crowed for many long seasons; the torch would have been
ready, but not the magazine. He prepared it; it was he who preached to
the Italians that opportunity is a mocking devil when we look for it to
be revealed; or, in other words, wait for chance; as it is God's angel
when it is created within us, the ripe fruit of virtue and devotion. He
cried out to Italians to wait for no inspiration but their own; that they
should never subdue their minds to follow any alien example; nor let a
foreign city of fire be their beacon. Watching over his Italy; her wrist
in his meditative clasp year by year; he stood like a mystic leech by the
couch of a fair and hopeless frame, pledged to revive it by the inspired
assurance, shared by none, that life had not forsaken it. A body given
over to death and vultures-he stood by it in the desert. Is it a marvel
to you that when the carrion-wings swooped low, and the claws fixed, and
the beak plucked and savoured its morsel, he raised his arm, and urged
the half-resuscitated frame to some vindicating show of existence?
Arise! he said, even in what appeared most fatal hours of darkness.
The slack limbs moved; the body rose and fell. The cost of the effort
was the breaking out of innumerable wounds, old and new; the gain was the
display of the miracle that Italy lived. She tasted her own blood, and
herself knew that she lived.

Then she felt her chains. The time was coming for her to prove, by the
virtues within her, that she was worthy to live, when others of her sons,
subtle and adept, intricate as serpents, bold, unquestioning as well-
bestridden steeds, should grapple and play deep for her in the game of
worldly strife. Now--at this hour of which I speak--when Austrians
marched like a merry flame down Milan streets, and Italians stood like