Laura, and the horrible little bronze butterfly, and the 'Sei sospetta,' now made her duty seem dry and miserably fleshless, imaging itself to her as if a skeleton had been told to arise and walk:--say, the thing obeys, and fills a ghastly distension of men's eyelids for a space, and again lies down, and men get their breath: but who is the rosier for it?
where is the glory of it?
what is the good?
This Milan, and Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Brescia, Venice, Florence, the whole Venetian, Tuscan, and Lombardic lands, down to far Sicily, and that Rome which always lay under the crown of a dead sunset in her idea--they too might rise; but she thought of them as skeletons likewise.

Even the shadowy vision of Italy Free had no bloom on it, and stood fronting the blown trumpets of resurrection Lazarus-like.
At these moments young hearts, though full of sap and fire, cannot do common nursing labour for the little suckling sentiments and hopes, the dreams, the languors and the energies hanging about them for nourishment.

Vittoria's horizon was within five feet of her.

She saw neither splendid earth nor ancient heaven; nothing save a breach to be stepped over in defiance of foes and (what was harder to brave) of friends.

Some wayward activity of old associations set her humming a quaint English tune, by which she was brought to her consciousness.
'Dear friend,' she said, becoming aware that there might be a more troubled depth in Ammiani's absence of speech than in her own.
'Yes ?' said he, quickly, as for a sentence to follow.