who had attacked him, and who bore the mark of
his sword.

CHAPTER X

THE POPE'S MOUTH

Barto Rizzo had done what he had sworn to do. He had not found it
difficult to outstrip the lieutenant (who had to visit Brescia on his
way) and reach the gates of Verona in advance of him, where he obtained
entrance among a body of grape-gatherers and others descending from the
hills to meet a press of labour in the autumnal plains. With them he
hoped to issue forth unchallenged on the following morning; but Wilfrid's
sword had made lusty play; and, as in the case when the order has been
given that a man shall be spared in life and limb, Barto and his
fellow-assailants suffered by their effort to hold him simply half a
minute powerless. He received a shrewd cut across the head, and lay for a
couple of hours senseless in the wine-shop of one Battista--one of the
many all over Lombardy who had pledged their allegiance to the Great Cat,
thinking him scarcely vulnerable. He read the letter, dizzy with pain,
and with the frankness proper to inflated spirits after loss of blood, he
owned to himself that it was not worth much as a prize. It was worth the
attempt to get possession of it, for anything is worth what it
costs, if it be only as a schooling in resolution, energy, and
devotedness:--regrets are the sole admission of a fruitless business;
they show the bad tree;--so, according to his principle of action, he
deliberated; but he was compelled to admit that Vittoria's letter was
little else than a repetition of her want of discretion when she was on
the Motterone. He admitted it, wrathfully: his efforts to convict this
woman telling him she deserved some punishment; and his suspicions being
unsatisfied, he resolved to keep them hungry upon her, and return to
Milan at once. As to the letter itself, he purposed, since the harm in it
was accomplished, to send it back honourably to the lieutenant, till
finding it blood-stained, he declined to furnish the gratification of
such a sight to any Austrian sword. For that reason, he copied it, while
Battista's wife held double bandages tight round his head: believing that
the letter stood transcribed in a precisely similar hand, he forwarded it
to Lieutenant Pierson, and then sank and swooned. Two days he lay
incapable and let his thoughts dance as they would. Information was
brought to him that the gates were strictly watched, and that troops were
starting for Milan. This was in the du