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 w