--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
between long pauses, that would have made another think life to be
heaving its last, not beginning.

The Piazza d'Armi was empty of its glittering show.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE NIGHT OF THE FIFTEENTH

We quit the Piazza d'Armi. Rumour had its home in Milan. On their way to
the caffe La Scala, Luciano and Carlo (who held together, determin