e, then, that they are in earnest, that
they are sincere, that they care a rush for this cause so holy to you.
They have entered into it, as all this common people do, for the love
of a new excitement, for the pleasurable mystery of conspiracy, for the
self-importance and gratulation. They will scatter at the signal of
danger, like mischievous boys when a gendarme comes round the corner.
They will betray you at the lifting of an Austrian finger. Leave them!"

This was too much to hear in silence,--to hear of these faithful
comrades, who had endured everything, and were yet to overcome because
they possessed their souls in patience, each of whom stood higher before
God than I in unspotted public purity, and whose praise and love led me
constantly to larger effort. At least I would make them the reparation
of vindication.

"You mistrust them?" I exclaimed. "They whose souls have been tried in
the furnace, who have the temper of fine steel, pliant as gold, but
incorruptible as adamant,--heroes and saints, they stand so low in your
favor? Come, then, come with me now,--for the bells have struck the
hour, and shadows clothe the earth,--come to their conclave where
discovery is death, and judge if they be idle prattlers, or men who
carry their lives in their hands!"

Fool! Fool! Fool! Every sound in the air cries out that word to me:
the bee that wings across the tower hums it in my ear; the booming
alarm-bell rings it forth; my heart, my failing heart, beats it while
I speak. I would have carried a snake to the sacred ibis-nest, and
thenceforth hope was hollow as an egg-shell!

She ran from the room, but, pausing in the door-way, exclaimed,--

"Remember, if you take me there, that I am no Roman patriot,--I! I,
who am of the House of Austria, that House that wears the crown of the
Caesars, those Caesars who swayed the very imperial sceptre, who trailed
the very imperial purple of old Rome! I endure the cause because it is
yours. I beseech you to be faithful to it; because I should despise you,
if for any woman you swerved from an object that had previously been
with you holier than heaven!"

I stood there leaning from the lofty window, and looking down over the
wide, solitary fields. Recollections crowded upon me, hopes rose before
me. One day, that yet lives in my heart, Anselmo, sprang up afresh, a
day forever domed in memory. Fair rose the sun that day, and I walked on
the nation's errands through the streets of a di