This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> VITTORIA By George Meredith CONTENTS: BOOK 7. XXXIII. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN-- THE STORY OF THE GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE VOLUNTEERS XXXIV. EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR--THE DEEDS OF BARTO RIZZO-- THE MEETING AT ROVEREDO XXXV. CLOSE OF THE LOMBARD CAMPAIGN--VITTORIA'S PERPLEXITY XXXVI. A FRESH ENTANGLEMENT XXXVII. ON LAGO MAGGIORE XXXVIII. VIOLETTA D'ISORELLA XXXIX. ANNA OF LENKENSTEIN CHAPTER XXXIII EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR COUNT KARL LENKENSTEIN--THE STORY OF THE GUIDASCARPI--THE VICTORY OF THE VOLUNTEERS The smoke of a pistol-shot thinned away while there was yet silence. "It is a saving of six charges of Austrian ammunition," said Pericles. Vittoria stared at the scene, losing faith in her eyesight. She could in fact see no distinct thing beyond what appeared as an illuminated copper medallion, held at a great distance from her, with a dead man and a towering female figure stamped on it. The events following were like a rush of water on her senses. There was fighting up the street of the village, and a struggle in the space where Rinaldo had fallen; successive yellowish shots under the rising moonlight, cries from Italian lips, quick words of command from German in Italian, and one sturdy bull's roar of a voice that called across the tumult to the Austro-Italian soldiery, "Venite fratelli!--come, brothers, come under our banner!" She heard "Rinaldo!" called. This was a second attack of the volunteers for the rescue of their captured comrades. They fought more desperately than on the hill outside the village: they fought with steel. Shot enfiladed them; yet they bore forward in a scattered body up to that spot where Rinaldo lay, shouting for him. There they turned,--they fled. Then there was a perfect stillness, succeeding the strife as quickly, Vittoria thought, as a breath yielded succeeds a breath taken. She accused the heavens of injustice. Pericles, prostrate on the floor, moaned that he was wounded. She said, "Bleed to death!" "It is my soul, it is my soul is wounded for you, Sandra." "Dreadful craven man!" she muttered. "When my soul is shaking for your safety, Sandra Belloni!" Pericles turned his ear up. "For myself--not; it is for you, for you." Assured of the cessation of arms by delicious silence he jumped to his feet. "Ah! brutes to fight. It is 'immonde;' it is unnatural!" He tapped his finger on the walls for marks of shot, and discovered a shot-hole in the wood-work, that had passed an arm's length above her head, into which he thrust his finger in an intense speculative meditation, shifting eyes from it to her, and throwing them aloft.