Venice?”
“I had business here; a matter of some moment. It is finished now, and I shall return.”
“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 equivoques, 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 never would 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 forever 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 bedside, and made no sign of leaving him.
“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 bedside, 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.”
“But you said you had failed?”
“And I now say that I have succeeded. Do you 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—?”
“Now I am sure that—Venice has been won.”
It was three months after this, and half of December had passed away, and all Venetia had in truth been ceded, and Victor Emmanuel had made his entry in to Venice and exit out of it, with as little of real triumph as ever attended a king’s progress through a new province, and the Austrian army had moved itself off very quietly, and the 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-in-law, 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.
Tomorrow, 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 have both. If he kept his Venice, he could not have me; but as he has lost his province, he shall have his wife entirely.”
“I told him that it was fated that he should lose Venetia,” said Carlo, “but he would never believe me.”
“Because I knew how true were our soldiers,” said Hubert, “and could not understand how false were our statesmen.”
“See how he regrets it,” said Nina; “what he has lost, and what he has won, will, together, break his heart for him.”
“Nina,” he said, “I learned this morning in the city, that I shall be the last Austrian soldier to leave Venice, and I hold that of all who have entered it, and all who have left it, I am the most successful and the most triumphant.”
The Turkish Bath
It was in the month of August. The world had gone to the moors and the Rhine, but we were still kept in town by the exigencies of our position. We had been worked hard during the preceding year, and were not quite as well as our best friends might have wished us;—and we resolved upon taking a Turkish bath. This little story records the experience of one individual man; but our readers, we hope, will, without a grudge, allow us the use of the editorial we. We doubt whether the story could be told at all in any other form. We resolved upon taking a Turkish bath, and at about three o’clock in the day we strutted from the outer to the inner room of the establishment in that light costume and with that air of Arab dignity which are peculiar to the place.
As everybody has not taken a Turkish bath in Jermyn Street, we will give the shortest possible description of the position. We had entered of course in the usual way, leaving our hat and our boots and our “valuables” among the numerous respectable assistants who throng the approaches; and as we had entered we had observed a stout, middle-aged gentleman on the other side of the street, clad in vestments somewhat the worse for wear, and to our eyes particularly noticeable by reason of the tattered condition of his gloves. A well-to-do man may have no gloves, or may simply carry in his hands those which appertain to him rather as a thing of custom than for any use for which he requires them. But a tattered glove, worn on the hand, is to our eyes the surest sign of a futile attempt at outer respectability. It is melancholy to us beyond expression. Our brother editors, we do not doubt, are acquainted with the tattered glove, and have known the
