When the show had vanished, their spirits hung pausing, like the hollow air emptied of big sound, and reacted.

Austria had gained little more by her display than the conscientious satisfaction of the pedagogue who lifts the rod to advise intending juvenile culprits how richly it can be merited and how poor will be their future grounds of complaint.
But before Austria herself had been taught a lesson she conceived that she had but one man and his feeble instruments, and occasional frenzies, opposed to her, him whom we saw on the Motterone, which was ceasing to be true; though it was true that the whole popular movement flowed from that one man.

She observed travelling sparks in the embers of Italy, and crushed them under her heel, without reflecting that a vital heat must be gathering where the spots of fire run with such a swiftness.

It was her belief that if she could seize that one man, whom many of the younger nobles and all the people acknowledged as their Chief--for he stood then without a rival in his task--she would have the neck of conspiracy in her angry grasp.

Had she caught him, the conspiracy for Italian freedom would not have crowed for many long seasons; the torch would have been ready, but not the magazine.