“Do you think that I am personally unfit to be your sister’s husband?”
“Not personally, but politically and nationally. You are not one of us; and now, at this moment, any attempt at close union between an Austrian and a Venetian must be ruinous. Von Vincke, I am heartily sorry for this. I blame the women, and not you.”
Then Carlo Pepé went home, and there was a rough scene between him and his mother, and a scene still rougher between him and his sister.
And in these interviews he told something, though not the whole of the truth as to the engagements into which he had entered. That he was to be the officer second in command in a regiment of Venetian volunteers, of those volunteers whom it was hoped that Garibaldi would lead to victory in the coming war, he did not tell them; but he did make them understand that when the struggle came he would be away from Venice, and would take a part in it.
“And how am I to do this,” he said, “if you here are joined hand and heart to an Austrian? A house divided against itself must fall.”
Let the reader understand that Nina Pepé, in spite of her love and of her lover, was as good an Italian as her brother, and that their mother was equally firm in her political desires and national antipathies. Where would you have found the Venetian, man or woman, who did not detest Austrian rule, and look forward to the good day coming when Venice should be a city of Italia?
The Signora and Nina had indeed, some six months before this, been much stronger in their hatred of all things German, than had the son and brother. It had been his liberal feeling, his declaration that even a German might be good, which had induced them to allow this Austrian to come among them.
Then the man and the soldier had been two; and Von Vincke had himself shown tendencies so strongly at variance with those of his comrades that he had disarmed their fears. He had read Italian, and condescended to speak it; he knew the old history of their once great city, and would listen to them when they talked of their old doges. He loved their churches, and their palaces, and their pictures. Gradually he had come to love Nina Pepé with all his heart, and Nina loved him too with all her heart.
But when her brother spoke to her and to her mother with more than his customary vehemence of what was due from them to their country, of the debt which certainly should be paid by him, of obligations to him from which they could not free themselves; and told them also, that by that time six months not an Austrian would be found in Venice, they trembled and believed him, and Nina felt that her love would not run smooth.
“You must be with us or against us,” said Carlo.
“Why then did you bring him here?” Nina replied.
“Am I to suppose that you cannot see a man without falling in love with him?”
“Carlo, that is unkind, almost unbrotherly. Was he not your friend, and were not you the first to tell us how good he is? And he is good; no man can be better.”
“He is an honest young man,” said the Signora.
“He is Austrian to the backbone,” said Carlo.
“Of course he is,” said Nina. “What should he be?”
“And will you be Austrian?” her brother asked.
“Not if I must be an enemy of Italy,” Nina said. “If an Austrian may be a friend to Italy, then I will be an Austrian. I wish to be Hubert’s wife. Of course I shall be an Austrian if he is my husband.”
“Then I trust that you may never be his wife,” said Carlo.
By the middle of May Carlo Pepé and Captain von Vincke had absolutely quarrelled. They did not speak, and Von Vincke had been ordered by the brother not to show himself at the house in the Campo San Luca.
Every German in Venice had now become more Austrian than before, and every Venetian more Italian. Even our friend the captain had come to believe in the war.
Not only Venice but Italy was in earnest, and Captain von Vincke foresaw, or thought that he foresaw, that a time of wretched misery was coming upon that devoted town. He would never give up Nina, but perhaps it might be well that he should cease to press his suit till he might be enabled to do so with something of the éclat of Austrian success.
And now at last it became necessary that the two women should be told of Carlo’s plans, for Carlo was going to leave Venice till the war should be over and he could re-enter the city as an Italian should enter a city of his own.
“Oh! my son, my son,” said the mother; “why should it be you?”
“Many must go, mother. Why not I as well as another?”
“In other houses there are fathers; and in other families more sons than one.”
“The time has come, mother, in which no woman should grudge either husband or son to the cause. But the thing is settled. I am already second colonel in a regiment which will serve with Garibaldi. You would not ask me to desert my colours?”
There was nothing further to be said. The Signora threw herself on her son’s neck and wept, and both mother and sister felt that their Carlo was already a second Garibaldi. When a man is a hero to women, they will always obey him. What could Nina do at such a time, but promise that she would not see Hubert von Vincke during his absence. Then there was a compact made between the brother and sister.
During three weeks past, that is, since the
