CHAPTER XI.
LAURA PIAVENI After dark on the same day antecedent to the outbreak, Vittoria, with her faithful Beppo at her heels, left her mother to run and pass one comforting hour in the society of the Signora Laura Piaveni and her children.
There were two daughters of a parasitical Italian nobleman, of whom one had married the patriot Giacomo Piaveni, and one an Austrian diplomatist, the Commendatore Graf von Lenkenstein.

Count Serabiglione was traditionally parasitical.

His ancestors all had moved in Courts.
The children of the House had illustrious sponsors.

The House itself was a symbolical sunflower constantly turning toward Royalty.

Great excuses are to be made for this, the last male descendant, whose father in his youth had been an Imperial page, and who had been nursed in the conception that Italy (or at least Lombardy) was a natural fief of Austria, allied by instinct and by interest to the holders of the Alps.
Count Serabiglione mixed little with his countrymen,--the statement might be inversed,--but when, perchance, he was among them, he talked willingly of the Tedeschi, and voluntarily declared them to be gross, obstinate, offensive-bears, in short.