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
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
the burnt-out cinders of the fire-grate, Italy's faint wrist was still in
the clutch of her grave leech, who counted the beating of her pulse
betw