from Venice had gone to the fortresses. He too might be wounded, -might be dead. If alive at the end of the war, he would hardly return to her after what had passed between them. But if he did not come back no lover should ever take a kiss from her lips. Then there was the long truce, and a letter from Carlo reached Venice. His wound had been slight, but he had been very hungry. He wrote in great anger, abusing, not the Austrians, but the Italians. There had been treachery, and the Italian generalin-chief had been the head of the traitors. The king was a traitor! The emperor was a traitor! All concerned were traitors, but yet Venetia was to be surrendered to Italy. I think that the two ladies in the Campo San Luca never really believed that this would be so until they received that angry letter from Carlo. "When I may get home, I cannot tell," he said. "I hardly care to return, and I shall remain with the general as long as he may wish to have any one remaining with him. But you may be sure that I shall never go soldiering again. Venetia may, perhaps, prosper, and become a part of Italy; but there will be no glory for us. Italy has been allowed to do nothing for herself." The mother and sister endeavoured to feel some sympathy for the young soldier who spoke so sadly of his own career, but they could hardly be unhappy because his fighting was over and the cause was won. The cause was won. Gradually there came to be no doubt about that. It was now September, and as yet it had not come to pass that shop windows were filled with wonderful portraits of Victor-Emmanuel and Garibaldi, cheek by jowl, they being the two men who at that moment were, perhaps, in all Italy, the most antagonistic to each other; nor were there as yet fifty different new journals cried day and night under the arcades of the Grand Piazza, all advocating the cause of Italy, one and indivisible, as there came to be a month afterwards; but still it was known that Austria was to cede Venetia, and that Venice would henceforth be a city of Italy. This was known; and it was also known in the Campo San Luca that Carlo Pepé, though very hungry up among the mountains, was still safe. Then Nina thought that the time had come in which it would become her to speak of her lover. "Mother," she said, "I must know something of Hubert." any officer of artillery who had been in Venice and had left it during the war must be in one of the four fortresses. "Mother," she said, "I shall go to Verona." And to Verona she went, all alone, in search of her lover. At that time the Austrians still maintained a sort of rule in the province; and there were still current orders against private travelling, orders that passports should be investigated, orders that the communication with the four fortresses should be specially guarded; but there was an intense desire on the part of the Austrians themselves that the orders should be regarded as little as possible. They had to go, and the more quietly they went the better. Why should they care now who passed hither and thither? It must be confessed on their behalf that in their surrender of Venetia they gave as little trouble as it was possible in them to cause. The chief obstruction to Nina's journey she experienced in the Campo San Luca itself. But in spite of her mother, in spite of the not yet defunct Austrian mandates, she did make her way to Verona. "As I was true in giving him up," she said to herself, "so will I be true in clinging to him." Even in Verona her task was not easy, but she did at last find all that she sought. Captain von Vincke had been in command of a battery at Custozza, and was now lying wounded in an Austrian hospital. contrived to see an old grey-haired surgeon before she saw Hubert himself. Captain von Vincke had been terribly mauled; so the surgeon told her; his left arm had been amputated, and-and-and—. It seemed as though wounds had been showered on him. The surgeon did not think that his patient would die; but he did think that he must be left in Verona when the Austrians were marched out of the fortress. "Can he not be taken to Venice ?" said Nina Pepé. She At last she found herself by her lover's bedside; but with her there were two hospital attendants, both of them worn-out Austrian soldiers,—and there was also there the grey-haired surgeon. How was she to tell her love all that she had in her heart before such witnessess? The surgeon was the first to speak. "Here is your friend, Captain," he said; but as he spoke in German Nina did not understand him. "But how, Nina; how will you learn? Will business to be in Verona as I have? Of course I you not wait till Carlo comes back?" "No," she said. "I cannot wait longer. I have kept my promise. Venice is no longer Austrian, and I will seek for him. I have kept my word to Carlo, and now I will keep my word to Hubert." But how to seek for him? The widow, urged by her daughter, went out and asked at barrack doors; but new regiments had come and gone, and everything was in confusion. It was supposed that am here." It may be to-morrow. It depends not on myself before he answered her. He spoke not a word of love to her then; nor she to him, unless there was love in such greeting as has been here repeated. Indeed, it was not till after that first interview that he fully understood that she had made her journey to Verona, solely in quest of him. The words between them for the first day or two were very tame, as though neither had full confidence in the other; and she had taken her place as nurse by his side, as a sister might have done by a brother.-and was established in her work,-nay, had nearly completed her work, before there came to be any full understanding between them. More than once she had told herself that she would go back to Venice and let there be an end of it. "The great work of the war," she said to herself, "has so filled his mind, that the idleness of his days in Venice and all that he did then, are forgotten. If so, my presence here is surely a sore burden to him, and I will go." But she could not now leave him without a word of farewell. "Hubert," she said, for she had called him Hubert when she first came to his bed-side, as though she had been his sister, "I think I must return now to Venice. My mother will be lonely without me." At that moment it appeared almost miraculous to ber that she should be sitting there by his bed-side, that she should have loved him, that she should have had the courage to leave her home and seek him after the war, that she should have found him ;and that she should now be about to leave him, almost without a word between them. 'Why did I come?" "Nina," he said, "why "Why are you here in Verona, while your mother is alone in Venice?" "I had business here,- -a matter of some moment. It is finished now, and I shall return." 66 'Was it other business than to sit at my bedside?" She paused a moment before she answered him. "Yes," she said; "it was other business than that." "And you have succeeded?" 'No; I have failed." He still held her hand; and she, though she was thus fencing with him, answering him with equivokes, felt that at last there was coming from him some word which would at least leave her no longer in doubt. "And I too,-have I failed?" he said. "When I left Venice I told myself heartily that I had failed.” "You told yourself, then?" said she, "that Venetia would never be ceded. You know that I would not triumph over you, now that your cause has been lost. We Italians have not much cause for triumphing." "You will admit always that the fortresses have not been taken from us," said the sore-hearted soldier. "Certainly we shall admit that." "And my own fortress ;-the stronghold that I thought I had made altogether mine-is that, too, lost for ever to the poor German?" "You speak in riddles, Captain von Vincke," she said. She had now taken back her hand; but she was sitting quietly by his bed-side, and made no "She must be very lonely," said the wounded | sign of leaving him. man. "And you, I think, are stronger than you were." "For me, I am strong enough. I have lost my arm, and I shall carry this gaping scar athwart my face to the grave, as my cross of honour won in the Italian war; but otherwise I shall soon be well." "It is a fair cross of honour." "Yes; they cannot rob us of our wounds when our service is over. And so you will go, Signorina?" "Yes; I will go. Why should I remain here? I will go, and Carlo will return, and I will tend upon him. Carlo also was wounded." 66 Nina," he said, "Nina,-my own Nina. In losing a single share of Venice, one soldier's share of the province, shall I have gained all the world for myself? Nina, tell me truly, what brought you to Verona ?" She knelt slowly down by his bed-side, and again taking his one hand in hers, pressed it first to her lips and then to her bosom. "It was an unmaidenly purpose," she said. "I came to find the man I loved." "And I now say that I have succeeded. not know that success in great matters always trembles in the balance before it turns the beam,thinking, fearing, all but knowing that failure has weighed down the scale." "But now- -?" "But you have told me that he is well again." "Nevertheless, he will value the comfort of a woman's care after his sufferings. May I say farewell to you now, my friend?" And she put her hand down upon the bed so that he might reach it. She had been with him for days, and there had been "Now I am sure that-Venice has been won!" no word of love. It had seemed as though he had It was three months after this, and half of understood nothing of what she had done in coming December had passed away, and all Venetia had in to him; that he had failed altogether in feeling that truth been ceded, and Victor-Emmanuel had made she had come as a wife goes to her husband. She his entry into Venice and exit out of it, with as had made a mistake in this journey, and must now little of real triumph as ever attended a king's rectify her error with as much of dignity as might progress through a new province, and the Austrian be left to her. army had moved itself off very quietly, and the He took her hand in his, and held it for a moment city had become as thoroughly Italian as Florence itself, and was in a way to be equally discontented, when a party of four, two ladies and two gentlemen, sat down to breakfast in the Hotel Bauer. The ladies were the Signora Pepé and her daughter, and the men were Carlo Pepé and his brother-inlaw, Hubert von Vincke. It was but a poor fête, this family breakfast at an obscure inn, but it was intended as a gala feast to mark the last day of Nina's Italian life. To-morrow, very early in the morning, she was to leave Venice for Trieste,-so early that it would be necessary that she should be on board this very night. "My child," said the Signora, "do not say so; you will never cease to be Italian. Surely, Hubert, she may still call herself Venetian?" "Mother," she said, "I love a losing cause. I will be Austrian now. I told him that he could not THE OLD ASTRONOMER. REACH me down my Tycho Brahé, I would know him when we meet, But my pupil, as my pupil, you have learnt the worth of scorn, What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight, I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known, You "have none but me," you murmur, and I "leave you quite alone." Well then, kiss me,-since my mother left her blessing on my brow, I have never failed in kindness." No, we lived too high for strife, To the service of our science, you will further it? you will! There are certain calculations I should like to make with you, I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap; I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak; S. A. D. T. |