"
"What can be the superiority of a Valaisan over the Lombard, or the
Piedmontese?" demanded the Signor Grimaldi quickly, like a man who was
curious to hear the reply. "A traveller should seek all kind of knowledge,
and I take this to be a newly-discovered fact."
"Liberty, Signore! We are our own masters; we have been so since the day
when our fathers sacked the castles of the barons, and compelled their
tyrants to become their equals. I think of this each time I reach the warm
plains of Italy, and return to my cottage a more contented man, for the
reflection."
"Spoken like a Swiss, though it is uttered by an ally of the cantons!"
cried Melchior de Willading, heartily. "This is the spirit, Gaetano, which
sustains our mountaineers, and renders them more happy amid their frosts
and rocks, than thy Genoese on his warm and glowing bay."
"The word liberty, Melchior, is more used than understood, and as much
abused as used;" returned the Signor Grimaldi gravely. "A country on which
God hath laid his finger in displeasure as on this, needs have some such
consolation as the phantom with which the honest Pierre appears to be so
well satisfied.
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