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Vittoria, Complete

G >> George Meredith >> Vittoria, Complete



VITTORIA


By George Meredith




CONTENTS:

BOOK 1.
I. UP MONTE MOTTERONE
II. ON THE HEIGHTS
III. SIGNORINA VITTORIA
IV. AMMIANI'S INTERCESSION
V. THE SPY
VI. THE WARNING
VII. BARTO RIZZO
VIII. THE LETTER

BOOK 2.
IX. IN VERONA
X. THE POPE'S MOUTH
XI. LAURA PIAVENI
XII. THE BRONZE BUTTERFLY
XIII. THE PLOT OF THE SIGNOR ANTONIO

BOOK 3.
XIV. AT THE MAESTRO'S DOOR
XV. AMMIANI THROUGH THE MIDNIGHT
XVI. COUNTESS AMMIANI
XVII. IN THE PIAZZA D'ARMI
XVIII. THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH
XIX. THE PRIMA DONNA

BOOK 4.
XX. THE OPERA OF CAMILLA
XXI. THE THIRD ACT
XXII. WILFRID COMES FORWARD
XXIII. FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT
XXIV. ADVENTURES OF VITTORIA AND ANGELO
XXV. ACROSS THE MOUNTAINS

BOOK 5.
XXVI. THE DUEL IN THE PASS
XXVII. A NEW ORDEAL
XXVIII. THE ESCAPE OF ANGELO

BOOK 6.
XXIX. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE TOBACCO RIOTS
--RINALDO GUIDASCARPI
XXX. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE FIVE DAYS OF
MILAN
XXXI. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--VITTORIA DISOBEYS HER LOVER
XXXII. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE TREACHERY OF
PERICLES-THE WRITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO GUIDASCARPI

BOOK 7.
XXXIII. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN--
THE STORY OF THE GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE VOLUNTEERS
XXXIV. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE DEEDS OF BARTO RIZZO--
THE MEETING AT ROVEREDO
XXXV. CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN--VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY
XXXVI. A FRESH ENTANGLEMENT
XXXVII. ON LAGO MAGGIORE
XXXVIII. VIOLETTA D'ISORELLA
XXXIX. ANNA OF LENKENSTEIN

BOOK 8.
XL. THROUGH THE WINTER
XLI. THE INTERVIEW
XLII. THE SHADOW OF CONSPIRACY
XLIII. THE LAST MEETING IN MILAN
XLIV. THE WIFE AND THE HUSBAND
XLV. SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END
XLVI. THE LAST
EPILOGUE




CHAPTER I

From Monte Motterone you survey the Lombard plain. It is a towering dome
of green among a hundred pinnacles of grey and rust-red crags. At dawn
the summit of the mountain has an eagle eye for the far Venetian boundary
and the barrier of the Apennines; but with sunrise come the mists. The
vast brown level is seen narrowing in; the Ticino and the Sesia waters,
nearest, quiver on the air like sleepy lakes; the plain is engulphed up
to the high ridges of the distant Southern mountain range, which lie
stretched to a faint cloud-like line, in shape like a solitary monster of
old seas crossing the Deluge. Long arms of vapour stretch across the
urn-like valleys, and gradually thickening and swelling upward, enwrap
the scored bodies of the ashen-faced peaks and the pastures of the green
mountain, till the heights become islands over a forgotten earth. Bells
of herds down the hidden run of the sweet grasses, and a continuous
leaping of its rivulets, give the Motterone a voice of youth and
homeliness amid that stern company of Titan-heads, for whom the hawk and
the vulture cry. The storm has beaten at them until they have got the
aspect of the storm. They take colour from sunlight, and are joyless in
colour as in shade. When the lower world is under pushing steam, they
wear the look of the revolted sons of Time, fast chained before scornful
heaven in an iron peace. Day at last brings vigorous fire; arrows of
light pierce the mist-wreaths, the dancing draperies, the floors of
vapour; and the mountain of piled pasturages is seen with its foot on the
shore of Lago Maggiore. Down an extreme gulf the full sunlight, as if
darting on a jewel in the deeps, seizes the blue-green lake with its
isles. The villages along the darkly-wooded borders of the lake show
white as clustered swans; here and there a tented boat is visible,
shooting from terraces of vines, or hanging on its shadow. Monte Boscero
is unveiled; the semicircle of the Piedmontese and the Swiss peaks,
covering Lake Orta, behind, on along the Ticinese and the Grisons,
leftward toward and beyond the Lugano hills, stand bare in black and grey
and rust-red and purple. You behold a burnished realm of mountain and
plain beneath the royal sun of Italy. In the foreground it shines hard as
the lines of an irradiated Cellini shield. Farther away, over middle
ranges that are soft and clear, it melts, confusing the waters with hot
rays, and the forests with darkness, to where, wavering in and out of
view like flying wings, and shadowed like wings of archangels with rose
and with orange and with violet, silverwhite Alps are seen. You might
take them for mystical streaming torches on the border-ground between
vision and fancy. They lean as in a great flight forward upon Lombardy.

The curtain of an early autumnal morning was everywhere lifted around the
Motterone, save for one milky strip of cloud that lay lizard-like across
the throat of Monte Boscero facing it, when a party of five footfarers,
who had met from different points of ascent some way below, and were
climbing the mountain together, stood upon the cropped herbage of the
second plateau, and stopped to eye the landscape; possibly also to get
their breath. They were Italians. Two were fair-haired muscular men,
bronzed by the sun and roughly bearded, bearing the stamp of breed of one
or other of the hill-cities under the Alps. A third looked a sturdy
soldier, squareset and hard of feature, for whom beauties of scenery had
few awakening charms. The remaining couple were an old man and a youth,
upon whose shoulder the veteran leaned, and with a whimsical turn of head
and eye, indicative of some playful cast of mind, poured out his remarks
upon the objects in sight, and chuckled to himself, like one who has
learnt the necessity to appreciate his own humour if he is disposed to
indulge it. He was carelessly wrapped about in long loose woollen stuff,
but the youth was dressed like a Milanese cavalier of the first quality,
and was evidently one who would have been at home in the fashionable
Corso. His face was of the sweetest virile Italian beauty. The head was
long, like a hawk's, not too lean, and not sharply ridged from a
rapacious beak, but enough to show characteristics of eagerness and
promptitude. His eyes were darkest blue, the eyebrows and long disjoining
eyelashes being very dark over them, which made their colour precious.
The nose was straight and forward from the brows; a fluent black
moustache ran with the curve of the upper lip, and lost its line upon a
smooth olive cheek. The upper lip was firmly supported by the under, and
the chin stood freely out from a fine neck and throat.

After a space an Austrian war-steamer was discerned puffing out of the
harbour of Laveno.

"That will do," said the old man. "Carlo, thou son of Paolo, we will
stump upward once more. Tell me, hulloa, sir! are the best peaches doomed
to entertain vile, domiciliary, parasitical insects? I ask you, does
nature exhibit motherly regard, or none, for the regions of the
picturesque? None, I say. It is an arbitrary distinction of our day. To
complain of the intrusion of that black-yellow flag and foul smoke-line
on the lake underneath us is preposterous, since, as you behold, the
heavens make no protestation. Let us up. There is comfort in exercise,
even for an ancient creature such as I am. This mountain is my brother,
and flatters me not--I am old."

"Take my arm, dear Agostino," said the youth.

"Never, my lad, until I need it. On, ahead of me, goat! chamois! and
teach me how the thing used to be done in my time. Old legs must be the
pupils of young ones mark that piece of humility, and listen with
respectfulness to an old head by-and-by."

It was the autumn antecedent to that memorable Spring of the great
Italian uprising, when, though for a tragic issue, the people of Italy
first felt and acted as a nation, and Charles Albert, called the Sword of
Italy, aspired, without comprehension of the passion of patriotism by
which it was animated, to lead it quietly into the fold of his
Piedmontese kingship.

There is not an easier or a pleasanter height to climb than the
Motterone, if, in Italian heat, you can endure the disappointment of
seeing the summit, as you ascend, constantly flit away to a farther
station. It seems to throw its head back, like a laughing senior when
children struggle up for kissings. The party of five had come through the
vines from Stresa and from Baveno. The mountain was strange to them, and
they had already reckoned twice on having the topmost eminence in view,
when reaching it they found themselves on a fresh plateau, traversed by
wild water-courses, and browsed by Alpine herds; and again the green dome
was distant. They came to the highest chalet, where a hearty wiry young
fellow, busily employed in making cheese, invited them to the enjoyment
of shade and fresh milk. "For the sake of these adolescents, who lose
much and require much, let it be so," said Agostino gravely, and not
without some belief that he consented to rest on behalf of his
companions. They allowed the young mountaineer to close the door, and sat
about his fire like sagacious men. When cooled and refreshed, Agostino
gave the signal for departure, and returned thanks for hospitality. Money
was not offered and not expected. As they were going forth the
mountaineer accompanied them to the step on the threshold, and with a
mysterious eagerness in his eyes, addressed Agostino.

"Signore, is it true?--the king marches?"

"Who is the king, my friend?" returned Agostino. "If he marches out of
his dominions, the king confers a blessing on his people perchance."

"Our king, signore!" The mountaineer waved his finger as from Novara
toward Milan.

Agostino seemed to awaken swiftly from his disguise of an absolute
gravity. A red light stood in his eyeballs, as if upon a fiery answer.
The intemperate fit subsided. Smoothing dawn his mottled grey beard with
quieting hands, he took refuge in his habitual sententious irony.

"My friend, I am not a hare in front of the king, nor am I a ram in the
rear of him: I fly him not, neither do I propel him. So, therefore, I
cannot predict the movements of the king. Will the wind blow from the
north to-morrow, think you?"

The mountaineer sent a quick gaze up the air, as to descry signs.

"Who knows?" Agostino continued, though not playing into the smiles of
his companions; "the wind will blow straight thither where there is a
vacuum; and all that we can state of the king is, that there is a
positive vacuum here. It would be difficult to predict the king's
movements save by such weighty indications."

He laid two fingers hard against the rib which shields the heart. It had
become apparently necessary for the speaker to relieve a mind surcharged
with bile at the mention of the king; for, having done, he rebuked with
an amazed frown the indiscretion of Carlo, who had shouted, "The
Carbonaro king!"

"Carlo, my son, I will lean on your arm. On your mouth were better,"
Agostino added, under his voice, as they moved on.

"Oh, but," Carlo remonstrated, "let us trust somebody. Milan has made me
sick of late. I like the look of that fellow."

"You allow yourself, my Carlo, an immense indulgence in permitting
yourself to like the look of anything. Now, listen--Viva Carlo Alberto!"

The old man rang out the loyal salutation spiritedly, and awoke a prompt
response from the mountaineer, who sounded his voice wide in the keen
upper air.

"There's the heart of that fellow!" said Agostino. "He has but one
idea--his king! If you confound it, he takes you for an enemy. These free
mountain breezes intoxicate you. You would embrace the king himself if
you met him here."

"I swear I would never be guilty of the bad joke of crying a 'Viva' to
him anywhere upon earth," Carlo replied. "I offend you," he said quickly.

The old man was smiling.

"Agostino Balderini is too notoriously a bad joker to be offended by the
comments of the perfectly sensible, boy of mine! My limbs were stiff, and
the first three steps from a place of rest reminded me acutely of the
king's five years of hospitality. He has saved me from all fatigue so
long, that the necessity to exercise these old joints of mine touched me
with a grateful sense of his royal bounty. I had from him a chair, a bed,
and a table: shelter from sun and from all silly chatter. Now I want a
chair or a bed. I should like to sit at a table; the sun burns me; my
ears are afflicted. I cry 'Viva!' to him that I may be in harmony with
the coming chorus of Italy, which I prophetically hear. That young
fellow, in whom you confide so much, speaks for his country. We poor
units must not be discordant. No! Individual opinion, my Carlo, is
discord when there is a general delirium. The tide arriving, let us make
the best of the tide. My voice is wisdom. We shall have to follow this
king!"

"Shall we!" uttered one behind them gruffly. "When I see this king
swallow one ounce of Austrian lead, I shall not be sorry to follow him!"

"Right, my dear Ugo," said Agostino, turning round to him; "and I will
then compose his hymn of praise. He has swallowed enough of Austrian
bread. He took an Austrian wife to his bed. Who knows? he may some day
declare a preference for Austrian lead. But we shall have to follow him,
or stay at home drivelling."

Agostino raised his eyes, that were glazed with the great heat of his
frame.

"Oh, that, like our Dante, I had lived in the days when souls were
damned! Then would I uplift another shout, believe me! As things go now,
we must allow the traitor to hope for his own future, and we simply
shrug. We cannot plant him neck-deep for everlasting in a burning marl,
and hear him howling. We have no weapons in these times--none! Our curses
come back to roost. This is one of the serious facts of the century, and
controls violent language. What! are you all gathered about me? Oracles
must be moving, too. There's no rest even for them, when they have got a
mountain to scale."

A cry, "He is there!" and "Do you see him?" burst from the throats of men
surrounding Agostino.

Looking up to the mountain's top, they had perceived the figure of one
who stood with folded arms, sufficiently near for the person of an
expected friend to be descried. They waved their hats, and Carlo shot
ahead. The others trod after him more deliberately, but in glad
excitement, speculating on the time which this sixth member of the party,
who were engaged to assemble at a certain hour of the morning upon yonder
height, had taken to reach the spot from Omegna, or Orta, or Pella, and
rejoicing that his health should be so stout in despite of his wasting
labours under city smoke.

"Yes, health!" said Agostino. "Is it health, do you think? It's the heart
of the man! and a heart with a mill-stone about it--a heart to breed a
country from! There stands the man who has faith in Italy, though she has
been lying like a corpse for centuries. God bless him! He has no other
comfort. Viva l'Italia!"

The exclamation went up, and was acknowledged by him on the eminence
overhanging them; but at a repetition of it his hand smote the air
sideways. They understood the motion, and were silent; while he, until
Carlo breathed his name in his hearing, eyed the great scene stedfastly,
with the absorbing simple passion of one who has endured long exile, and
finds his clustered visions of it confronting the strange, beloved,
visible life:--the lake in the arms of giant mountains: the far-spreading
hazy plain; the hanging forests; the pointed crags; the gleam of the
distant rose-shadowed snows that stretch for ever like an airy host,
mystically clad, and baffling the eye as with the motions of a flight
toward the underlying purple land.




CHAPTER II

He was a man of middle stature, thin, and even frail, as he stood defined
against the sky; with the complexion of the student, and the student's
aspect. The attentive droop of his shoulders and head, the straining of
the buttoned coat across his chest, the air as of one who waited and
listened, which distinguished his figure, detracted from the promise of
other than contemplative energy, until his eyes were fairly seen and
felt. That is, until the observer became aware that those soft and large
dark meditative eyes had taken hold of him. In them lay no abstracted
student's languor, no reflex burning of a solitary lamp; but a quiet
grappling force engaged the penetrating look. Gazing upon them, you were
drawn in suddenly among the thousand whirring wheels of a capacious and a
vigorous mind, that was both reasoning and prompt, keen of intellect,
acting throughout all its machinery, and having all under full command:
an orbed mind, supplying its own philosophy, and arriving at the
sword-stroke by logical steps,--a mind much less supple than a soldier's;
anything but the mind of a Hamlet. The eyes were dark as the forest's
border is dark; not as night is dark. Under favourable lights their
colour was seen to be a deep rich brown, like the chestnut, or more like
the hazeledged sunset brown which lies upon our western rivers in the
winter floods, when night begins to shadow them.

The side-view of his face was an expression of classic beauty rarely now
to be beheld, either in classic lands or elsewhere. It was severe; the
tender serenity of the full bow of the eyes relieved it. In profile they
showed little of their intellectual quality, but what some might have
thought a playful luminousness, and some a quick pulse of feeling. The
chin was firm; on it, and on the upper lip, there was a clipped growth of
black hair. The whole visage widened upward from the chin, though not
very markedly before it reached the broad-lying brows. The temples were
strongly indented by the swelling of the forehead above them: and on both
sides of the head there ran a pregnant ridge, such as will sometimes lift
men a deplorable half inch above the earth we tread. If this man was a
problem to others, he was none to himself; and when others called him an
idealist, he accepted the title, reading himself, notwithstanding, as one
who was less flighty than many philosophers and professedly practical
teachers of his generation. He saw far, and he grasped ends beyond
obstacles: he was nourished by sovereign principles; he despised material
present interests; and, as I have said, he was less supple than a
soldier. If the title of idealist belonged to him, we will not
immediately decide that it was opprobrious. The idealized conception of
stern truths played about his head certainly for those who knew and who
loved it. Such a man, perceiving a devout end to be reached, might prove
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."

The others meantime had thrown themselves on the grass at the feet of
their manifestly acknowledged leader, and looked up for Agostino to
explode the last of his train of conceits. He became aware that the
moment for serious talk had arrived, and bent his body, groaning loudly,
and uttering imprecations against him whom he accused of being the
promoter of its excruciating stiffness, until the ground relieved him of
its weight. Carlo continued standing, while his eyes examined restlessly
the slopes just surmounted by them, and occasionally the deep descent
over the green-glowing Orta Lake. It was still early morning. The heat
was tempered by a cool breeze that came with scents of thyme. They had no
sight of human creature anywhere, but companionship of Alps and birds of
upper air; and though not one of them seasoned the converse with an
exclamation of joy and of blessings upon a place of free speech and
safety, the thought was in their hunted bosoms, delicious as a woodland
rivulet that sings only to the leaves overshadowing it.

They were men who had sworn to set a nation free,--free from the
foreigner, to begin with.

(He who tells this tale is not a partisan; he would deal equally toward
all. Of strong devotion, of stout nobility, of unswerving faith and
self-sacrifice, he must approve; and when these qualities are displayed
in a contest of forces, the wisdom of means employed, or of ultimate
views entertained, may be questioned and condemned; but the men
themselves may not be.)

These men had sworn their oath, knowing the meaning of it, and the nature
of the Fury against whom men who stand voluntarily pledged to any great
resolve must thenceforward match themselves. Many of the original
brotherhood had fallen, on the battle-field, on the glacis, or in the
dungeon. All present, save the youthfuller Carlo, had suffered.
Imprisonment and exile marked the Chief. Ugo Corte, of Bergamo, had seen
his family swept away by the executioner and pecuniary penalties. Thick
scars of wounds covered the body and disfigured the face of Giulio
Bandinelli. Agostino had crawled but half-a-year previously out of his
Piedmontese cell, and Marco Sana, the Brescian, had in such a place
tasted of veritable torture. But if the calamity of a great oath was upon
them, they had now in their faithful prosecution of it the support which
it gives. They were unwearied; they had one object; the mortal anguish
they had gone through had left them no sense for regrets. Life had become
the field of an endless engagement to them; and as in battle one sees
beloved comrades struck down, and casts but a glance at their prostrate
forms, they heard the mention of a name, perchance, and with a word or a
sign told what was to be said of a passionate glorious heart at rest,
thanks to Austrian or vassal-Sardinian mercy.

So they lay there and discussed their plans.

"From what quarter do you apprehend the surprise?" Ugo Corte glanced up
from the maps and papers spread along the grass to question Carlo
ironically, while the latter appeared to be keeping rigid watch over the
safety of the position. Carlo puffed the smoke of a cigarette rapidly,
and Agostino replied for him:--"From the quarter where the best donkeys
are to be had."

It was supposed that Agostino had resumed the habit usually laid aside by
him for the discussion of serious matters, and had condescended to father
a coarse joke; but his eyes showed no spark of their well-known twinkling
solicitation for laughter, and Carlo spoke in answer gravely:--"From
Baveno it will be."

"From Baveno! They might as well think to surprise hawks from Baveno.
Keep watch, dear Ammiani; a good start in a race is a kick from the
Gods."

With that, Corte turned to the point of his finger on the map. He
conceived it possible that Carlo Ammiani, a Milanese, had reason to
anticipate the approach of people by whom he, or they, might not wish to
be seen. Had he studied Carlo's face he would have been reassured. The
brows of the youth were open, and his eyes eager with expectation, that
showed the flying forward of the mind, and nothing of knotted distrust or
wary watchfulness. Now and then he would move to the other side of the
mountain, and look over upon Orta; or with the opera-glass clasped in one
hand beneath an arm, he stopped in his sentinel-march, frowning
reflectively at a word put to him, as if debating within upon all the
bearings of it; but the only answer that came was a sharp assent, given
after the manner of one who dealt conscientiously in definite
affirmatives; and again the glass was in requisition. Marco Sana was a
fighting soldier, who stated what he knew, listened, and took his orders.
Giulio Bandinelli was also little better than the lieutenant in an
enterprise. Corte, on the other hand, had the conspirator's head,--a head
like a walnut, bulging above the ears,--and the man was of a sallying
temper. He lay there putting bit by bit of his plot before the Chief for
his approval, with a careful construction, that upon the expression of
any doubt of its working smoothly in the streets of Milan, caused him to
shout a defensive, "But Carlo says yes!"