The life prayed for by one seemed a wisp of straw flung on this humming
furnace.

Countess Ammiani was too well used to defeat to believe readily in
victory, and had shrouded her head in resignation too long to hope for
what she craved. Her hands were joined softly in her lap. Her visage
had the same unmoved expression when she conversed with Violetta as when
she listened to the ravings of the Corso.

Darkness came, and the bells ceased not rolling by her open windows: the
clouds were like mists of conflagration.

She would not have the windows closed. The noise of the city had become
familiar and akin to the image of her boy. She sat there cloaked.

Her heart went like a time-piece to the two interrogations to heaven:
"Alive?--or dead?"

The voice of Luciano Romara was that of an angel's answering. He entered
the room neat and trim as a cavalier dressed for social evening duty,
saying with his fine tact, "We are all well;" and after talking like a
gazette of the Porta Tosa taken by the volunteers, Barto Rizzo's
occupation of the gate opening on the Ticino, and the bursting of the
Porta Camosina by the freebands of the plains, he handed a letter to
Countess Ammiani.

"Carlo is on the march to Bergamo and Brescia, with Corte, Sana, and
about fifty of our men," he said.

"And is wounded--where?" asked Violetta.