lence their
sense of security, the sweetness of home, but presently they would begin
again. Before going to bed they stepped out on the terrace. The night
was dark and warm, the lake motionless. The sultriness, the gloom, the
vague and monstrous shapes of the mountains, seemed to their imagination
heavy with the mortal weight of Austria. The very air itself seemed full
of it. Neither Franco nor Luisa was sleepy, but they must go to bed on
account of the servant who was watching with Maria. They entered the
room on tiptoe. The child was sleeping, her breathing almost normal.

They also tried to sleep, but could not. They could not refrain from
talking, especially Franco. He would ask softly: "Are you asleep?" and
upon her answering, "No," the coins, the papers, the sabre, or the bully
with his Venetian accent would be discussed once more. By this time
there was nothing new to be said on these subjects, and, as Maria began
to be restless, and to show signs of waking, towards dawn, Luisa
answered, "Yes," the next time Franco inquired softly, "Are you asleep?"
and after that he kept quiet, as if he really believed it.

* * * * *

The day after the search at Casa Ribera, Oria, Albogasio, and S. Mamette
were full of whisperings. "Have you heard?--Oh, dear Lord!--Have you
heard?--Oh, holy Madonna!" But the loudest whisperings were of course
those that communicated the news to Barborin Pasotti. Her husband
shouted into her face: "Maironi! Police! Gendarmes! Arrest!" The poor
woman concluded an army had swept her friends away, and began to
puff--"oh! oh!"--like an engine. Then she groaned and wept, and
questioned Pasotti about the child. Pasotti, who was determined not to
allow her to go down to Oria and exhibit her affection for the Maironis
under these circumstances, replied with a gesture like the sweep of a
broom. Gone! Gone! She also!--But the servant? The servant must surely
be there still. The crafty man made another sweeping gesture in the air,
and then Barborin grasped the fact that His Imperial and Royal Austrian
Majesty had had the servant carried off as well.

But the most malicious whisperings were uttered at a great distance from
Valsolda, in a room in the Maironi Palace, at Brescia. Ten days after
the search the Chevalier Greisberg di S. Giustina, a cousin of the
Maironis, who had been attached to the government of Field-Marshal
Radetzky in Verona until 1853, and had then accompan