CHAPTER XXX

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR

THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN

The same hand which brought Rinaldo's letter to his brother delivered a

message from Barto Rizzo, bidding Angelo to start at once and head a

stout dozen or so of gallant Swiss. The letter and the message appeared

to be grievous contradictions: one was evidently a note of despair, while

the other sang like a trumpet. But both were of a character to draw him

swiftly on to Milan. He sent word to his Lugano friends, naming a village

among the mountains between Como and Varese, that they might join him

there if they pleased.

Toward nightfall, on the nineteenth of the month, he stood with a small

band of Ticinese and Italian fighting lads two miles distant from the

city. There was a momentary break in long hours of rain; the air was full

of inexplicable sounds, that floated over them like a toning of

multitudes wailing and singing fitfully behind a swaying screen. They

bent their heads. At intervals a sovereign stamp on the pulsation of the

uproar said, distinct as a voice in the ear--Cannon. "Milan's alive!"

Angelo cried, and they streamed forward under the hurry of stars and

scud, till thumping guns and pattering musket-shots, the long big boom of

surgent hosts, and the muffled voluming and crash of storm-bells,

proclaimed that the insurrection was hot. A rout of peasants bearing

immense ladders met them, and they joined with cheers, and rushed to the

walls. As yet no gate was in the possession of the people. The walls

showed bayonet-points: a thin edge of steel encircled a pit of fire.

Angelo resolved to break through at once. The peasants hesitated, but his

own men were of one mind to follow, and, planting his ladder in the

ditch, he rushed up foremost. The ladder was full short; he called out in

German to a soldier to reach his hand down, and the butt-end of a musket

was dropped, which he grasped, and by this aid sprang to the parapet, and

was seized. "Stop," he said, "there's a fellow below with my brandy-flask

and portmanteau." The soldiers were Italians; they laughed, and hauled

away at man after man of the mounting troop, calling alternately

"brandy-flask!--portmanteau!" as each one raised a head above the

parapet. "The signor has a good supply of spirits and baggage," they

remarked. He gave them money for porterage, saying, "You see, the gates

are held by that infernal people, and a quiet traveller must come over

the walls. Viva l'Italia! who follows me?" He carried away three of those

present. The remainder swore that they and their comrades would be on his

side on the morrow. Guided by the new accession to his force, Angelo

gained the streets. All shots had ceased; the streets were lighted with

torches and hand-lamps; barricades were up everywhere, like a convulsion

of the earth. Tired of receiving challenges and mounting the endless

piles of stones, he sat down at the head of the Corso di Porta Nuova,

and took refreshments from the hands of ladies. The house-doors were all

open. The ladies came forth bearing wine and minestra, meat and bread, on

trays; and quiet eating and drinking, and fortifying of the barricades,

went on. Men were rubbing their arms and trying rusty gun-locks. Few of

them had not seen Barto Rizzo that day; but Angelo could get no tidings

of his brother. He slept on a door-step, dreaming that he was blown about

among the angels of heaven and hell by a glorious tempest. Near morning

an officer of volunteers came to inspect the barricade defences. Angelo

knew him by sight; it was Luciano Romara. He explained the position of

the opposing forces. The Marshal, he said, was clearly no street-fighter.

Estimating the army under his orders in Milan at from ten to eleven

thousand men of all arms, it was impossible for him to guard the gates

and then walls, and at the same time fight the city. Nor could he

provision his troops. Yesterday the troops had made one: charge and done

mischief, but they had immediately retired. "And if they take to

cannonading us to-day, we shall know what that means," Romara concluded.

Angelo wanted to join him. "No, stay here," said Romara. "I think you are

a man who won't give ground." He had not seen either Rinaldo or Ammiani,

but spoke of both as certain to be rescued.

Rain and cannon filled the weary space of that day. Some of the

barricades fronting the city gates had been battered down by nightfall;

they were restored within an hour. Their defenders entered the houses

right and left during the cannonade, waiting to meet the charge; but the

Austrians held off. "They have no plan," Romara said on his second visit

of inspection; "they are waiting on Fortune, and starve meanwhile. We can

beat them at that business."

Romara took Angelo and his Swiss away with him. The interior of the city

was abandoned by the Imperialists, who held two or three of the principal

buildings and the square of the Duomo. Clouds were driving thick across

the cold-gleaming sky when the storm-bells burst out with the wild

Jubilee-music of insurrection--a carol, a jangle of all discord, savage

as flame. Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal; and

now they joined and now rolled apart, now joined again and clanged like

souls shrieking across the black gulfs of an earthquake; they swam aloft

with mournful delirium, tumbled together, were scattered in spray,

dissolved, renewed, died, as a last worn wave casts itself on an unfooted

shore, and rang again as through rent doorways, became a clamorous host,

an iron body, a pressure as of a down-drawn firmament, and once more a

hollow vast, as if the abysses of the Circles were sounded through and

through. To the Milanese it was an intoxication; it was the howling of

madness to the Austrians--a torment and a terror: they could neither

sing, nor laugh, nor talk under it. Where they stood in the city, the

troops could barely hear their officers' call of command. No sooner had

the bells broken out than the length of every street and Corso flashed

with the tri-coloured flag; musket-muzzles peeped from the windows; men

with great squares of pavement lined the roofs. Romara mounted a stiff

barricade and beheld a scattered regiment running the gauntlet of storms

of shot and missiles, in full retreat upon the citadel. On they came,

officers in front for the charge, as usual with the Austrians; fire on

both flanks, a furious mob at their heels, and the barricade before them.

They rushed at Romara, and were hurled back, and stood in a riddled lump.

Suddenly Romara knocked up the rifles of the couching Swiss; he yelled to

the houses to stop firing. "Surrender your prisoners,--you shall pass,"

he called. He had seen one dear head in the knot of the soldiery. No

answer was given. Romara, with Angelo and his Swiss and the ranks of the

barricade, poured over and pierced the streaming mass, steel for steel.

"Ammiani! Ammiani!" Romara cried; a roar from the other side, "Barto!

Barto! the Great Cat!" met the cry. The Austrians struck up a cheer under

the iron derision of the bells; it was ludicrous, it was as if a door had

slammed on their mouths, ringing tremendous echoes in a vaulted roof.

They stood sweeping fire in two oblong lines; a show of military array

was preserved like a tattered robe, till Romara drove at their centre and

left the retreat clear across the barricade. Then the whitecoats were

seen flowing over, the motley surging hosts from the city in

pursuit--foam of a storm-torrent hurled forward by the black tumult of

precipitous waters. Angelo fell on his brother's neck; Romara clasped

Carlo Ammiani. These two were being marched from the prison to the

citadel when Barto Rizzo, who had prepared to storm the building,

assailed the troops. To him mainly they were indebted for their rescue.

Even in that ecstasy of meeting, the young men smiled at the

preternatural transport on his features as he bounded by them, mad for

slaughter, and mounting a small brass gun on the barricade, sent the

charges of shot into the rear of the enemy. He kissed the black lip of

his little thunderer in, a rapture of passion; called it his wife, his

naked wife; the best of mistresses, who spoke only when he charged her to

speak; raved that she was fair, and liked hugging; that she was true, and

the handsomest daughter of Italy; that she would be the mother of big

ones--none better than herself, though they were mountains of sulphur big

enough to make one gulp of an army.

His wife in the flesh stood at his feet with a hand-grenade and a rifle,

daggers and pistols in her belt. Her face was black with powder-smoke as

the muzzle of the gun. She looked at Rinaldo once, and Rinaldo at her;

both dropped their eyes, for their joy at seeing one another alive was

mighty.

Dead Austrians were gathered in a heap. Dead and wounded Milanese were

taken into the houses. Wine was brought forth by ladies and household

women. An old crutched beggar, who had performed a deed of singular

intrepidity in himself kindling a fire at the door of one of the

principal buildings besieged by the people, and who showed perforated

rags with a comical ejaculation of thanks to the Austrians for knowing

how to hit a scarecrow and make a beggar holy, was the object of

particular attention. Barto seated him on his gun, saying that his

mistress and beauty was honoured; ladies were proud in waiting on the

fine frowzy old man. It chanced during that morning that Wilfrid Pierson

had attached himself to Lieutenant Jenna's regiment as a volunteer. He

had no arms, nothing but a huge white umbrella, under which he walked dry

in the heavy rain, and passed through the fire like an impassive

spectator of queer events. Angelo's Swiss had captured them, and the mob

were maltreating them because they declined to shout for this valorous

ancient beggarman. "No doubt he's a capital fellow," said Jenna; "but

'Viva Scottocorni' is not my language;" and the spirited little subaltern

repeated his "Excuse me," with very good temper, while one knocked off

his shako, another tugged at his coat-skirts. Wilfrid sang out to the

Guidascarpi, and the brothers sprang to him and set them free; but the

mob, like any other wild beast gorged with blood, wanted play, and urged

Barto to insist that these victims should shout the viva in exaltation of

their hero.

"Is there a finer voice than mine?" said Barto, and he roared the 'viva'

like a melodious bull. Yet Wilfrid saw that he had been recognized. In

the hour of triumph Barto Rizzo had no lust for petty vengeance. The

magnanimous devil plumped his gorge contentedly on victory. His ardour

blazed from his swarthy crimson features like a blown fire, when scouts

came running down with word that all about the Porta Camosina, Madonna

del Carmine, and the Gardens, the Austrians were reaping the white flag

of the inhabitants of that district. Thitherward his cry of "Down with

the Tedeschi!" led the boiling tide. Rinaldo drew Wilfrid and Jenna to an

open doorway, counselling the latter to strip the gold from his coat and

speak his Italian in monosyllables. A woman of the house gave her promise

to shelter and to pass them forward. Romara, Ammiani, and the

Guidascarpi, went straight to the Casa Gonfalonieri, where they hoped to

see stray members of the Council of War, and hear a correction of certain

unpleasant rumours concerning the dealings of the Provisional Government

with Charles Albert.

The first crack of a division between the patriot force and the

aristocracy commenced this day; the day following it was a breach.

A little before dusk the bells of the city ceased their hammering, and

when they ceased, all noises of men and musketry seemed childish. The

woman who had promised to lead Wilfrid and Jenna to the citadel, feared

no longer either for herself or them, and passed them on up the Corso

Francesco past the Contrada del Monte. Jenna pointed out the Duchess of

Graatli's house, saying, "By the way, the Lenkensteins are here; they

left Venice last week. Of course you know, or don't you?--and there they

must stop, I suppose." Wilfrid nodded an immediate good-bye to him, and

crossed to the house-door. His eccentric fashion of acting had given him

fame in the army, but Jenna stormed at it now, and begged him to come on

and present himself to General Schoneck, if not to General Pierson.

Wilfrid refused even to look behind him. In fact, it was a part of the

gallant fellow's coxcombry (or nationality) to play the Englishman. He

remained fixed by the housedoor till midnight, when a body of men in the

garb of citizens, volubly and violently Italian in their talk, struck

thrice at the door. Wilfrid perceived Count Lenkenstein among them. The

ladies Bianca, Anna, and Lena issued mantled and hooded between the

lights of two barricade watchfires. Wilfrid stepped after them. They had

the password, for the barricades were crossed. The captain of the

head-barricade in the Corso demurred, requiring a counter-sign.

Straightway he was cut down. He blew an alarm-call, when up sprang a

hundred torches. The band of Germans dashed at the barricade as at the

tusks of a boar. They were picked men, most of them officers, but a

scanty number in the thick of an armed populace. Wilfrid saw the lighted

passage into the great house, and thither, throwing out his arms, he bore

the affrighted group of ladies, as a careful shepherd might do. Returning

to Count Lenkenstein's side, "Where are they?" the count said, in mortal

dread. "Safe," Wilfrid replied. The count frowned at him inquisitively.

"Cut your way through, and on!" he cried to three or four who hung near

him; and these went to the slaughter.

"Why do you stand by me, sir?" said the count. Interior barricades were

pouring their combatants to the spot; Count Lenkenstein was plunged upon

the door-steps. Wilfrid gained half-a-minute's parley by shouting in his

foreign accent, "Would you hurt an Englishman?" Some one took him by the

arm, and helping to raise the count, hurried them both into the house.

"You must make excuses for popular fury in times like these," the

stranger observed.

The Austrian nobleman asked him stiffly for his name. The name of Count

Ammiani was given. "I think you know it," Carlo added.

"You escaped from your lawful imprisonment this day, did you not?--you

and your cousin, the assassin. I talk of law! I might as justly talk of

honour. Who lives here?" Carlo contained himself to answer, "The present

occupant is, I believe, if I have hit the house I was seeking, the

Countess d'Isorella."

"My family were placed here, sir?" Count Lenkenstein inquired of Wilfrid.

But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria's lover. A

wifely call of "Adalbert" from above quieted the count's anxiety.

"Countess d'Isorella," he said. "I know that woman. She belongs to the

secret cabinet of Carlo Alberto--a woman with three edges. Did she not

visit you in prison two weeks ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. She

applied to the Archduke and the Marshal for permission to visit you. It

was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was from

Turin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go to

her. You, sir," the count turned to Wilfrid--"you will stay below. Are

you in the pay of the insurgents?"

Wilfrid, the weakest of human beings where women were involved with him,

did one of the hardest things which can task a young man's fortitude: he

looked his superior in the face, and neither blenched, nor frowned, nor

spoke.

Ammiani spoke for him. "There is no pay given in our ranks."

"The licence to rob is supposed to be an equivalent," said the count.

Countess d'Isorella herself came downstairs, with profuse apologies for

the absence of all her male domestics, and many delicate dimples about

her mouth in uttering them. Her look at Ammiani struck Wilfrid as having

a peculiar burden either of meaning or of passion in it. The count

grimaced angrily when he heard that his sister Lena was not yet able to

bear the fatigue of a walk to the citadel. "I fear you must all be my

guests, for an hour at least," said the countess.

Wilfrid was left pacing the hall. He thought he had never beheld so

splendid a person, or one so subjugatingly gracious. Her speech and

manner poured oil on the uncivil Austrian nobleman. What perchance had

stricken Lena?

He guessed; and guessed it rightly. A folded scrap of paper signed by the

Countess of Lenkenstein was brought to him.

It said:--"Are you making common cause with the rebels? Reply. One asks

who should be told."

He wrote:--"I am an outcast of the army. I fight as a volunteer with the

K. K. troops. Could I abandon them in their peril?"

The touch of sentiment he appended for Lena's comfort. He was too

strongly impressed by the new vision of beauty in the house for his

imagination to be flushed by the romantic posture of his devotion to a

trailing flag.

No other message was delivered. Ammiani presently descended and obtained

a guard from the barricade; word was sent on to the barricades in advance

toward the citadel. Wilfrid stood aside as Count Lenkenstein led the

ladies to the door, bearing Lena on his arm. She passed her lover veiled.

The count said, "You follow." He used the menial second person plural of

German, and repeated it peremptorily.

"I follow no civilian," said Wilfrid.

"Remember, sir, that if you are seen with arms in your hands, and are not

in the ranks, you run the chances of being hanged."

Lena broke loose from her brother; in spite of Anna's sharp remonstrance

and the count's vexed stamp of the foot, she implored her lover:--"Come

with us; pardon us; protect me--me! You shall not be treated harshly.

They shall not Oh! be near me. I have been ill; I shrink from danger. Be

near me!"

Such humble pleading permitted Wilfrid's sore spirit to succumb with the

requisite show of chivalrous dignity. He bowed, and gravely opened his

enormous umbrella, which he held up over the heads of the ladies, while

Ammiani led the way. All was quiet near the citadel. A fog of plashing

rain hung in red gloom about the many watchfires of the insurgents, but

the Austrian head-quarters lay sombre and still. Close at the gates,

Ammiani saluted the ladies. Wilfrid did the same, and heard Lena's call

to him unmoved.

"May I dare to hint to you that it would be better for you to join your

party?" said Ammiani.

Wilfrid walked on. After appearing to weigh the matter, he answered, "The

umbrella will be of no further service to them to-night."

Ammiani laughed, and begged to be forgiven; but he could have done

nothing more flattering.

Sore at all points, tricked and ruined, irascible under the sense of his

injuries, hating everybody and not honouring himself, Wilfrid was fast

growing to be an eccentric by profession. To appear cool and careless was

the great effort of his mind.

"We were introduced one day in the Piazza d'Armi," said Ammiani. "I would

have found means to convey my apologies to you for my behaviour on that

occasion, but I have been at the mercy of my enemies. Lieutenant Pierson,

will you pardon me? I have learnt how dear you and your family should be

to me. Pray, accept my excuses and my counsel. The Countess Lena was my

friend when I was a boy. She is in deep distress."

"I thank you, Count Ammiani, for your extremely disinterested advice,"

said Wilfrid; but the Italian was not cut to the quick by his irony; and

he added: "I have hoisted, you perceive, the white umbrella instead of

wearing the white coat. It is almost as good as an hotel in these times;

it gives as much shelter and nearly as much provision, and, I may say,

better attendance. Good-night. You will be at it again about daylight, I

suppose?"

"Possibly a little before," said Ammiani, cooled by the false ring of

this kind of speech.

"It's useless to expect that your infernal bells will not burst out like

all the lunatics on earth?"

"Quite useless, I fear. Good-night."

Ammiani charged one of the men at an outer barricade to follow the white

umbrella and pass it on.

He returned to the Countess d'Isorella, who was awaiting him, and alone.

This glorious head had aroused his first boyish passion. Scandal was busy

concerning the two, when Violetta d'Asola, the youthfullest widow in

Lombardy and the loveliest woman, gave her hand to Count d'Isorella, who

took it without question of the boy Ammiani. Carlo's mother assisted in

that arrangement; a maternal plot, for which he could thank her only

after he had seen Vittoria, and then had heard the buzz of whispers at

Violetta's name. Countess d'Isorella proved her friendship to have

survived the old passion, by travelling expressly from Turin to obtain

leave to visit him in prison. It was a marvellous face to look upon

between prison walls. Rescued while the soldiers were marching him to the

citadel that day, he was called by pure duty to pay his respects to the

countess as soon as he had heard from his mother that she was in the

city. Nor was his mother sorry that he should go. She had patiently

submitted to the fact of his betrothal to Vittoria, which was his

safeguard in similar perils; and she rather hoped for Violetta to wean

him from his extreme republicanism. By arguments? By influence, perhaps.

Carlo's republicanism was preternatural in her sight, and she presumed

that Violetta would talk to him discreetly and persuasively of the noble

designs of the king.

Violetta d'Isorella received him with a gracious lifting of her fingers

to his lips; congratulating him on his escape, and on the good fortune of

the day. She laughed at the Lenkensteins and the singular Englishman; sat

down to a little supper-tray, and pouted humorously as she asked him to

feed on confects and wine; the huge appetites of the insurgents had

devoured all her meat and bread.

"Why are you here?" he said.

She did well in replying boldly, "For the king."

"Would you tell another that it is for the king?"

"Would I speak to another as I speak to you?"

Ammiani inclined his head.

They spoke of the prospects of the insurrection, of the expected outbreak

in Venice, the eruption of Paris and Vienna, and the new life of Italy;

touching on Carlo Alberto to explode the truce in a laughing dissension.

At last she said seriously, "I am a born Venetian, you know; I am not

Piedmontese. Let me be sure that the king betrays the country, and I will

prefer many heads to one. Excuse me if I am more womanly just at present.

The king has sent his accredited messenger Tartini to the Provisional

Government, requesting it to accept his authority. Why not? why not? on

both sides. Count Medole gives his adhesion to the king, but you have a

Council of War that rejects the king's overtures--a revolt within a

revolt.

"It is deplorable. You must have an army. The Piedmontese once over the

Ticino, how can you act in opposition to it? You must learn to take a

master. The king is only, or he appears, tricksy because you compel him

to wind and counterplot. I swear to you, Italy is his foremost thought.

The Star of Italy sits on the Cross of Savoy."

Ammiani kept his eyelids modestly down. "Ten thousand to plead for him,

such as you!" he said. "But there is only one!"

"If you had been headstrong once upon a time, and I had been weak, you

see, my Carlo, you would have been a domestic tyrant, I a rebel. You will

not admit the existence of a virtue in an opposite opinion. Wise was your

mother when she said 'No' to a wilful boy!"

Violetta lit her cigarette and puffed the smoke lightly.

"I told you in that horrid dungeon, my Carlo Amaranto--I call you by the

old name--the old name is sweet!--I told you that your Vittoria is

enamoured of the king. She blushes like a battle-flag for the king. I

have heard her 'Viva il Re!' It was musical."

"So I should have thought."

"Ay, but my amaranto-innamorato, does it not foretell strife? Would you

ever--ever take a heart with a king's head stamped on it into your arms?"

"Give me the chance!"

He was guilty of this ardent piece of innocence though Violetta had

pitched her voice in the key significant of a secret thing belonging to

two memories that had not always flowed dividedly.

"Like a common coin?" she resumed.

"A heart with a king's head stamped on it like a common coin."

He recollected the sentence. He had once, during the heat of his grief

for Giacomo Piaveni, cast it in her teeth.

Violetta repeated it, as to herself, tonelessly; a method of making an

old unkindness strike back on its author with effect.

"Did we part good friends? I forget," she broke the silence.

"We meet, and we will be the best of friends," said Ammiani.

"Tell your mother I am not three years older than her son,--I am thirty.

Who will make me young again? Tell her, my Carlo, that the genius for

intrigue, of which she accuses me, develops at a surprising rate. As

regards my beauty," the countess put a tooth of pearl on her soft under

lip.

Ammiani assured her that he would find words of his own for her beauty.

"I hear the eulogy, I know the sonnet," said Violetta, smiling, and

described the points of a brunette: the thick black banded hair, the full

brown eyes, the plastic brows couching over them;--it was Vittoria's

face: Violetta was a flower of colour, fair, with but one shade of dark

tinting on her brown eye-brows and eye-lashes, as you may see a strip of

night-cloud cross the forehead of morning. She was yellow-haired, almost

purple-eyed, so rich was the blue of the pupils. Vittoria could be sallow

in despondency; but this Violetta never failed in plumpness and

freshness. The pencil which had given her aspect the one touch of

discord, endowed it with a subtle harmony, like mystery; and Ammiani

remembered his having stood once on the Lido of Venice, and eyed the dawn

across the Adriatic, and dreamed that Violetta was born of the loveliness

and held in her bosom the hopes of morning. He dreamed of it now, feeling

the smooth roll of a torrent.

A cry of "Arms!" rang down the length of the Corso.

He started to his feet thankfully.

"Take me to your mother," she said. "I loathe to hear firing and be

alone."

Ammiani threw up the window. There was a stir of lamps and torches below,

and the low sky hung red. Violetta stood quickly thick-shod and hooded.

"Your mother will admit my companionship, Carlo?"

"She desires to thank you."

"She has no longer any fear of me?"

"You will find her of one mind with you."

"Concerning the king!"

"I would say, on most subjects."

"But that you do not know my mind! You are modest. Confess that you are

thinking the hour you have passed with me has been wasted."

"I am, now I hear the call to arms."

"If I had all the while entertained you with talk of your Vittoria! It

would not have been wasted then, my amaranto. It is not wasted for me. If

a shot should strike you--"

"Tell her I died loving her with all my soul!" cried Ammiani.

Violetta's frame quivered as if he had smitten her.

They left the house. Countess Ammiani's door was the length of a

barricade distant: it swung open to them, like all the other house-doors

which were, or wished to be esteemed, true to the cause, and hospitable

toward patriots.

"Remember, when you need a refuge, my villa is on Lago Maggiore,"

Violetta said, and kissed her finger-tips to him.

An hour after, by the light of this unlucky little speech, he thought of

her as a shameless coquette. "When I need a refuge? Is not Milan in

arms?--Italy alive? She considers it all a passing epidemic; or, perhaps,

she is to plead for me to the king!"

That set him thinking moodily over the things she had uttered of

Vittoria's strange and sudden devotion to the king.

Rainy dawn and the tongues of the churches ushered in the last day of

street fighting. Ammiani found Romara and Colonel Corte at the head of

strong bodies of volunteers, well-armed, ready to march for the Porta

'rosa. All three went straight to the house where the Provisional

Government sat, and sword in hand denounced Count Medole as a traitor who

sold his country to the king. Corte dragged him to the window to hear the

shouts for the Republic. Medole wrote their names down one by one, and

said, "Shall I leave the date vacant?" They put themselves at the head of

their men, and marched in the ringing of the bells. The bells were their

sacro-military music. Barto Rizzo was off to make a spring at the Porta

Ticinese. Students, peasants, noble youths of the best blood, old men and

young women, stood ranged in the drenching rain, eager to face death for

freedom. At mid-day the bells were answered by cannon and the blunt snap

of musketry volleys; dull, savage responses, as of a wounded great beast

giving short howls and snarls by the interminable over-roaring of a

cataract. Messengers from the gates came running to the quiet centre of

the city, where cool men discoursed and plotted. Great news, big lies,

were shouted:--Carlo Alberto thundered in the plains; the Austrians were

everywhere retiring; the Marshal was a prisoner; the flag of surrender

was on the citadel! These things were for the ears of thirsty women,

diplomatists, and cripples.

Countess Ammiani and Countess d'Isorella sat together throughout the

agitation of the day.

The life prayed for by one seemed a wisp of straw flung on this humming

furnace.

Countess Ammiani was too well used to defeat to believe readily in

victory, and had shrouded her head in resignation too long to hope for

what she craved. Her hands were joined softly in her lap. Her visage had

the same unmoved expression when she conversed with Violetta as when she

listened to the ravings of the Corso.

Darkness came, and the bells ceased not rolling by her open windows: the

clouds were like mists of conflagration.

She would not have the windows closed. The noise of the city had become

familiar and akin to the image of her boy. She sat there cloaked.

Her heart went like a time-piece to the two interrogations to heaven:

"Alive?--or dead?"

The voice of Luciano Romara was that of an angel's answering. He entered

the room neat and trim as a cavalier dressed for social evening duty,

saying with his fine tact, "We are all well;" and after talking like a

gazette of the Porta Tosa taken by the volunteers, Barto Rizzo's

occupation of the gate opening on the Ticino, and the bursting of the

Porta Camosina by the freebands of the plains, he handed a letter to

Countess Ammiani.

"Carlo is on the march to Bergamo and Brescia, with Corte, Sana, and

about fifty of our men," he said.

"And is wounded--where?" asked Violetta.

"Slightly in the hand--you see, he can march," Romara said, laughing at

her promptness to suspect a subterfuge, until he thought, "Now, what does

this mean, madam?"

A lamp was brought to Countess Ammiani. She read:

"MY MOTHER!

"Cotton-wool on the left fore-finger. They deigned to give me no

other memorial of my first fight. I am not worthy of papa's two

bullets. I march with Corte and Sana to Brescia. We keep the

passes of the Tyrol. Luciano heads five hundred up to the hills

to-morrow or next day. He must have all our money. Then go from

door to door and beg subscriptions. Yes, my Chief! it is to be

like God, and deserving of his gifts to lay down all pride, all

wealth. This night send to my betrothed in Turin. She must be with

no one but my mother. It is my command. Tell her so. I hold

imperatively to it.

"I breathe the best air of life. Luciano is a fine leader in

action, calm as in a ball-room. What did I feel? I will talk of it

with you by-and-by;--my father whispered in my ears; I felt him at

my right hand. He said, 'I died for this day.' I feel now that I

must have seen him. This is imagination. We may say that anything

is imagination. I certainly heard his voice. Be of good heart, my

mother, for I can swear that the General wakes up when I strike

Austrian steel. He loved Brescia; so I go there. God preserve my

mother! The eyes of heaven are wide enough to see us both.

Vittoria by your side, remember! It is my will.

"CARLO."

Countess Ammiani closed her eyes over the letter, as in a dead sleep. "He

is more his father than himself, and so suddenly!" she said. She was

tearless. Violetta helped her to her bed-room under the pretext of a

desire to hear the contents of the letter.

That night, which ended the five days of battle in Milan, while fires

were raging at many gates, bells were rolling over the roof-tops, the

army of Austria coiled along the North-eastern walls of the city, through

rain and thick obscurity, and wove its way like a vast worm into the

outer land.