A OF LENKENSTEIN

BOOK 8.
XL. THROUGH THE WINTER
XLI. THE INTERVIEW
XLII. THE SHADOW OF CONSPIRACY
XLIII. THE LAST MEETING IN MILAN
XLIV. THE WIFE AND THE HUSBAND
XLV. SHOWS MANY PATHS CONVERGING TO THE END
XLVI. THE LAST
EPILOGUE

CHAPTER I

From Monte Motterone you survey the Lombard plain. It is a towering dome
of green among a hundred pinnacles of grey and rust-red crags. At
dawn the summit of the mountain has an eagle eye for the far Venetian
boundary and the barrier of the Apennines; but with sunrise come the
mists. The vast brown level is seen narrowing in; the Ticino and the
Sesia waters, nearest, quiver on the air like sleepy lakes; the plain is
engulphed up to the high ridges of the distant Southern mountain range,
which lie stretched to a faint cloud-like line, in shape like a solitary
monster of old seas crossing the Deluge. Long arms of vapour stretch
across the urn-like valleys, and gradually thickening and swelling
upward, enwrap the scored bodies of the ashen-faced peaks and the
pastures of the green mountain, till the heights become islands over
a forgotten earth. Bells of herds down the hidden run of the sweet
grasses, and a continuous leaping of its rivulets, give the Motterone
a voice of youth and homeliness amid that stern company of Titan-heads,
for whom the hawk and the vulture cry. The storm has beaten at them
until they have got the aspect of the storm. They take colour from
sunlight, and are joyless in colour as in shade. When the lower world
is under pushing steam, they wear the look of the revolted sons of Time,
fast chained before scornful heaven in an iron peace. Day at last brings
vigorous fire; arrows of light pierce the mist-wreaths, the dancing
draperies, the floors of vapour; and the mountain of piled pasturages is
seen with its foot on the shore of Lago Maggiore. Down an extreme gulf
the full sunlight, as if darting on a jewel in the deeps, seizes the
blue-green lake with its isles. The villages along the darkly-wooded
borders of the lake show white as clustered swans; here and there a
tented boat is visible, shooting from terraces of vines, or hanging on
its shadow. Monte Boscero is unveiled; the semicircle of the Piedmontese
and the Swiss peaks, covering Lake Orta, behind, on along the Ticinese
and the Grisons, leftward toward and beyond the Lugano hills, stand bare
in black and grey and rust-red and purple. You