Vittoria — Complete

by George Meredith

  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 delivereda message from Barto Rizzo, bidding Angelo to start at once and head astout dozen or so of gallant Swiss. The letter and the message appearedto be grievous contradictions: one was evidently a note of despair,while the other sang like a trumpet. But both were of a character todraw him swiftly on to Milan. He sent word to his Lugano friends, naminga village among the mountains between Como and Varese, that they mightjoin him there if they pleased.

  Toward nightfall, on the nineteenth of the month, he stood with a smallband of Ticinese and Italian fighting lads two miles distant from thecity. There was a momentary break in long hours of rain; the air wasfull of inexplicable sounds, that floated over them like a toning ofmultitudes wailing and singing fitfully behind a swaying screen. Theybent their heads. At intervals a sovereign stamp on the pulsation of theuproar said, distinct as a voice in the ear--Cannon. "Milan's alive!"Angelo cried, and they streamed forward under the hurry of stars andscud, till thumping guns and pattering musket-shots, the long big boomof surgent hosts, and the muffled voluming and crash of storm-bells,proclaimed that the insurrection was hot. A rout of peasants bearingimmense ladders met them, and they joined with cheers, and rushed tothe walls. As yet no gate was in the possession of the people. The wallsshowed bayonet-points: a thin edge of steel encircled a pit of fire.Angelo resolved to break through at once. The peasants hesitated, buthis own men were of one mind to follow, and, planting his ladder in theditch, he rushed up foremost. The ladder was full short; he called outin German to a soldier to reach his hand down, and the butt-end of amusket was dropped, which he grasped, and by this aid sprang to theparapet, and was seized. "Stop," he said, "there's a fellow below withmy brandy-flask and portmanteau." The soldiers were Italians; theylaughed, and hauled away at man after man of the mounting troop, callingalternately "brandy-flask!--portmanteau!" as each one raised a headabove the parapet. "The signor has a good supply of spirits andbaggage," they remarked. He gave them money for porterage, saying, "Yousee, the gates are held by that infernal people, and a quiet travellermust come over the walls. Viva l'Italia! who follows me?" He carriedaway three of those present. The remainder swore that they and theircomrades would be on his side on the morrow. Guided by the new accessionto his force, Angelo gained the streets. All shots had ceased; thestreets were lighted with torches and hand-lamps; barricades wereup everywhere, like a convulsion of the earth. Tired of receivingchallenges and mounting the endless piles of stones, he sat down at thehead of the Corso di Porta Nuova, and took refreshments from the handsof ladies. The house-doors were all open. The ladies came forth bearingwine and minestra, meat and bread, on trays; and quiet eating anddrinking, and fortifying of the barricades, went on. Men were rubbingtheir arms and trying rusty gun-locks. Few of them had not seen BartoRizzo that day; but Angelo could get no tidings of his brother. He slepton a door-step, dreaming that he was blown about among the angelsof heaven and hell by a glorious tempest. Near morning an officer ofvolunteers came to inspect the barricade defences. Angelo knew him bysight; it was Luciano Romara. He explained the position of the opposingforces. The Marshal, he said, was clearly no street-fighter. Estimatingthe army under his orders in Milan at from ten to eleven thousand men ofall 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 theyhad immediately retired. "And if they take to cannonading us to-day,we shall know what that means," Romara concluded. Angelo wanted to joinhim. "No, stay here," said Romara. "I think you are a man who won't giveground." He had not seen either Rinaldo or Ammiani, but spoke of both ascertain to be rescued.

  Rain and cannon filled the weary space of that day. Some of thebarricades fronting the city gates had been battered down by nightfall;they were restored within an hour. Their defenders entered the housesright and left during the cannonade, waiting to meet the charge; but theAustrians held off. "They have no plan," Romara said on his second visitof inspection; "they are waiting on Fortune, and starve meanwhile. Wecan beat them at that business."

  Romara took Angelo and his Swiss away with him. The interior of thecity was abandoned by the Imperialists, who held two or three of theprincipal buildings and the square of the Duomo. Clouds were drivingthick across the cold-gleaming sky when the storm-bells burst outwith the wild Jubilee-music of insurrection--a carol, a jangle of alldiscord, savage as flame. Every church of the city lent its iron tongueto the peal; and now they joined and now rolled apart, now joinedagain and clanged like souls shrieking across the black gulfs of anearthquake; they swam aloft with mournful delirium, tumbled together,were scattered in spray, dissolved, renewed, died, as a last wornwave casts itself on an unfooted shore, and rang again as through rentdoorways, became a clamorous host, an iron body, a pressure as of adown-drawn firmament, and once more a hollow vast, as if the abysses ofthe Circles were sounded through and through. To the Milanese it was anintoxication; it was the howling of madness to the Austrians--a tormentand a terror: they could neither sing, nor laugh, nor talk underit. Where they stood in the city, the troops could barely hear theirofficers' call of command. No sooner had the bells broken out than thelength of every street and Corso flashed with the tri-coloured flag;musket-muzzles peeped from the windows; men with great squares ofpavement lined the roofs. Romara mounted a stiff barricade and beheld ascattered regiment running the gauntlet of storms of shot and missiles,in full retreat upon the citadel. On they came, officers in front forthe charge, as usual with the Austrians; fire on both flanks, a furiousmob at their heels, and the barricade before them. They rushed atRomara, and were hurled back, and stood in a riddled lump. SuddenlyRomara knocked up the rifles of the couching Swiss; he yelled to thehouses to stop firing. "Surrender your prisoners,--you shall pass," hecalled. He had seen one dear head in the knot of the soldiery. Noanswer was given. Romara, with Angelo and his Swiss and the ranks of thebarricade, 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 cheerunder the iron derision of the bells; it was ludicrous, it was as if adoor had slammed on their mouths, ringing tremendous echoes in a vaultedroof. They stood sweeping fire in two oblong lines; a show of militaryarray was preserved like a tattered robe, till Romara drove at theircentre and left the retreat clear across the barricade. Then thewhitecoats were seen flowing over, the motley surging hosts from thecity in pursuit--foam of a storm-torrent hurled forward by the blacktumult of precipitous waters. Angelo fell on his brother's neck; Romaraclasped Carlo Ammiani. These two were being marched from the prison tothe 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 thepreternatural transport on his features as he bounded by them, mad forslaughter, and mounting a small brass gun on the barricade, sent thecharges of shot into the rear of the enemy. He kissed the black lip ofhis little thunderer in, a rapture of passion; called it his wife, hisnaked wife; the best of mistresses, who spoke only when he charged herto speak; raved that she was fair, and liked hugging; that she was true,and the handsomest daughter of Italy; that she would be the motherof big ones--none better than herself, though they were mountains ofsulphur 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 asthe 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 wasmighty.

  Dead Austrians were gathered in a heap. Dead and wounded Milanese weretaken into the houses. Wine was brought forth by ladies and householdwomen. An old crutched beggar, who had perfor
med a deed of singularintrepidity in himself kindling a fire at the door of one of theprincipal buildings besieged by the people, and who showed perforatedrags with a comical ejaculation of thanks to the Austrians for knowinghow to hit a scarecrow and make a beggar holy, was the object ofparticular attention. Barto seated him on his gun, saying that hismistress and beauty was honoured; ladies were proud in waiting on thefine frowzy old man. It chanced during that morning that Wilfrid Piersonhad attached himself to Lieutenant Jenna's regiment as a volunteer. Hehad no arms, nothing but a huge white umbrella, under which he walkeddry in the heavy rain, and passed through the fire like an impassivespectator of queer events. Angelo's Swiss had captured them, and the mobwere maltreating them because they declined to shout for this valorousancient beggarman. "No doubt he's a capital fellow," said Jenna;"but 'Viva Scottocorni' is not my language;" and the spirited littlesubaltern repeated his "Excuse me," with very good temper, while oneknocked off his shako, another tugged at his coat-skirts. Wilfrid sangout to the Guidascarpi, and the brothers sprang to him and set themfree; but the mob, like any other wild beast gorged with blood, wantedplay, and urged Barto to insist that these victims should shout the vivain 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. Inthe hour of triumph Barto Rizzo had no lust for petty vengeance. Themagnanimous devil plumped his gorge contentedly on victory. His ardourblazed from his swarthy crimson features like a blown fire, when scoutscame running down with word that all about the Porta Camosina, Madonnadel Carmine, and the Gardens, the Austrians were reaping the white flagof the inhabitants of that district. Thitherward his cry of "Down withthe Tedeschi!" led the boiling tide. Rinaldo drew Wilfrid and Jenna toan open doorway, counselling the latter to strip the gold from his coatand speak his Italian in monosyllables. A woman of the house gave herpromise to shelter and to pass them forward. Romara, Ammiani, and theGuidascarpi, went straight to the Casa Gonfalonieri, where they hopedto see stray members of the Council of War, and hear a correction ofcertain unpleasant rumours concerning the dealings of the ProvisionalGovernment with Charles Albert.

  The first crack of a division between the patriot force and thearistocracy commenced this day; the day following it was a breach.

  A little before dusk the bells of the city ceased their hammering, andwhen they ceased, all noises of men and musketry seemed childish. Thewoman who had promised to lead Wilfrid and Jenna to the citadel, fearedno longer either for herself or them, and passed them on up the CorsoFrancesco past the Contrada del Monte. Jenna pointed out the Duchess ofGraatli's house, saying, "By the way, the Lenkensteins are here; theyleft Venice last week. Of course you know, or don't you?--and there theymust stop, I suppose." Wilfrid nodded an immediate good-bye to him, andcrossed to the house-door. His eccentric fashion of acting had given himfame in the army, but Jenna stormed at it now, and begged him to comeon 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 thegallant fellow's coxcombry (or nationality) to play the Englishman. Heremained fixed by the housedoor till midnight, when a body of men in thegarb of citizens, volubly and violently Italian in their talk, struckthrice at the door. Wilfrid perceived Count Lenkenstein among them.The ladies Bianca, Anna, and Lena issued mantled and hooded between thelights of two barricade watchfires. Wilfrid stepped after them. Theyhad the password, for the barricades were crossed. The captain ofthe head-barricade in the Corso demurred, requiring a counter-sign.Straightway he was cut down. He blew an alarm-call, when up sprang ahundred torches. The band of Germans dashed at the barricade as at thetusks of a boar. They were picked men, most of them officers, but ascanty number in the thick of an armed populace. Wilfrid saw the lightedpassage into the great house, and thither, throwing out his arms, hebore the affrighted group of ladies, as a careful shepherd might do.Returning to Count Lenkenstein's side, "Where are they?" the countsaid, in mortal dread. "Safe," Wilfrid replied. The count frowned at himinquisitively. "Cut your way through, and on!" he cried to three or fourwho hung near him; and these went to the slaughter.

  "Why do you stand by me, sir?" said the count. Interior barricades werepouring their combatants to the spot; Count Lenkenstein was plunged uponthe door-steps. Wilfrid gained half-a-minute's parley by shouting in hisforeign accent, "Would you hurt an Englishman?" Some one took him by thearm, and helping to raise the count, hurried them both into the house.

  "You must make excuses for popular fury in times like these," thestranger observed.

  The Austrian nobleman asked him stiffly for his name. The name of CountAmmiani was given. "I think you know it," Carlo added.

  "You escaped from your lawful imprisonment this day, did you not?--youand your cousin, the assassin. I talk of law! I might as justly talk ofhonour. Who lives here?" Carlo contained himself to answer, "The presentoccupant is, I believe, if I have hit the house I was seeking, theCountess d'Isorella."

  "My family were placed here, sir?" Count Lenkenstein inquired ofWilfrid. But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria'slover. A wifely call of "Adalbert" from above quieted the count'sanxiety.

  "Countess d'Isorella," he said. "I know that woman. She belongs to thesecret cabinet of Carlo Alberto--a woman with three edges. Did she notvisit you in prison two weeks ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. Sheapplied to the Archduke and the Marshal for permission to visit you.It was accorded. To the devil with our days of benignity! She was fromTurin. The shuffle has made her my hostess for the nonce. I will go toher. You, sir," the count turned to Wilfrid--"you will stay below. Areyou 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: helooked his superior in the face, and neither blenched, nor frowned, norspoke.

  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 forthe absence of all her male domestics, and many delicate dimples abouther mouth in uttering them. Her look at Ammiani struck Wilfrid as havinga peculiar burden either of meaning or of passion in it. The countgrimaced angrily when he heard that his sister Lena was not yet able tobear the fatigue of a walk to the citadel. "I fear you must all be myguests, for an hour at least," said the countess.

  Wilfrid was left pacing the hall. He thought he had never beheld sosplendid a person, or one so subjugatingly gracious. Her speech andmanner poured oil on the uncivil Austrian nobleman. What perchance hadstricken Lena?

  He guessed; and guessed it rightly. A folded scrap of paper signed bythe Countess of Lenkenstein was brought to him.

  It said:--"Are you making common cause with the rebels? Reply. One askswho should be told."

  He wrote:--"I am an outcast of the army. I fight as a volunteer with theK. K. troops. Could I abandon them in their peril?"

  The touch of sentiment he appended for Lena's comfort. He was toostrongly impressed by the new vision of beauty in the house for hisimagination to be flushed by the romantic posture of his devotion to atrailing flag.

  No other message was delivered. Ammiani presently descended and obtaineda guard from the barricade; word was sent on to the barricades inadvance toward the citadel. Wilfrid stood aside as Count Lenkenstein ledthe ladies to the door, bearing Lena on his arm. She passed her loverveiled. The count said, "You follow." He used the menial second personplural 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 arenot in the ranks, you run the chances of being hanged."

  Lena broke loose from her brother; in spite of Anna's sharp remonstranceand the count's vexed stamp of the foot, she implored her lover:--"Comewith 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. Benear me!"

  Such humble pleading permitted Wilfrid's sore spirit to succumb with therequisite show of chivalrous dignity. He bowed, and gravely opened hisenormous umbrella, which he held up over the heads of the ladies, whileAmmiani led the way. All was quiet near the citadel. A fog of plashingrain hung in red gloom about the many watchfires of the insurgents, butthe Austrian head-quarters lay sombre and still. Close at the gates,Ammiani saluted the ladies. Wilfrid did the same, and heard Lena's callto him unmoved.

  "May I dare to hint to you that it would be better for you to join yourparty?" 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 donenothing more flattering.

  Sore at all points, tricked and ruined, irascible under the sense of hisinjuries, hating everybody and not honouring himself, Wilfrid was fastgrowing to be an eccentric by profession. To appear cool and carelesswas the great effort of his mind.

  "We were introduced one day in the Piazza d'Armi," said Ammiani. "Iwould have found means to convey my apologies to you for my behaviouron that occasion, but I have been at the mercy of my enemies. LieutenantPierson, will you pardon me? I have learnt how dear you and your familyshould be to me. Pray, accept my excuses and my counsel. The CountessLena 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; andhe added: "I have hoisted, you perceive, the white umbrella instead ofwearing 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, Isuppose?"

  "Possibly a little before," said Ammiani, cooled by the false ring ofthis kind of speech.

  "It's useless to expect that your infernal bells will not burst out likeall the lunatics on earth?"

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

  Ammiani charged one of the men at an outer barricade to follow the whiteumbrella 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 wasbusy concerning the two, when Violetta d'Asola, the youthfullest widowin Lombardy and the loveliest woman, gave her hand to Count d'Isorella,who took it without question of the boy Ammiani. Carlo's mother assistedin that arrangement; a maternal plot, for which he could thank her onlyafter he had seen Vittoria, and then had heard the buzz of whispersat Violetta's name. Countess d'Isorella proved her friendship to havesurvived the old passion, by travelling expressly from Turin to obtainleave to visit him in prison. It was a marvellous face to look uponbetween prison walls. Rescued while the soldiers were marching him tothe citadel that day, he was called by pure duty to pay his respects tothe countess as soon as he had heard from his mother that she was inthe city. Nor was his mother sorry that he should go. She had patientlysubmitted to the fact of his betrothal to Vittoria, which was hissafeguard in similar perils; and she rather hoped for Violetta to weanhim from his extreme republicanism. By arguments? By influence, perhaps.Carlo's republicanism was preternatural in her sight, and she presumedthat Violetta would talk to him discreetly and persuasively of the nobledesigns of the king.

  Violetta d'Isorella received him with a gracious lifting of her fingersto his lips; congratulating him on his escape, and on the good fortuneof the day. She laughed at the Lenkensteins and the singular Englishman;sat down to a little supper-tray, and pouted humorously as she asked himto feed on confects and wine; the huge appetites of the insurgents haddevoured 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 expectedoutbreak in Venice, the eruption of Paris and Vienna, and the new lifeof Italy; touching on Carlo Alberto to explode the truce in a laughingdissension. 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 justat present. The king has sent his accredited messenger Tartini to theProvisional Government, requesting it to accept his authority. Why not?why not? on both sides. Count Medole gives his adhesion to the king, butyou have a Council of War that rejects the king's overtures--a revoltwithin a revolt.

  "It is deplorable. You must have an army. The Piedmontese once over theTicino, how can you act in opposition to it? You must learn to take amaster. The king is only, or he appears, tricksy because you compel himto 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, yousee, my Carlo, you would have been a domestic tyrant, I a rebel. Youwill not admit the existence of a virtue in an opposite opinion. Wisewas 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 bythe old name--the old name is sweet!--I told you that your Vittoria isenamoured of the king. She blushes like a battle-flag for the king. Ihave heard her 'Viva il Re!' It was musical."

  "So I should have thought."

  "Ay, but my amaranto-innamorato, does it not foretell strife? Wouldyou ever--ever take a heart with a king's head stamped on it into yourarms?"

  "Give me the chance!"

  He was guilty of this ardent piece of innocence though Violetta hadpitched her voice in the key significant of a secret thing belonging totwo 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 grieffor Giacomo Piaveni, cast it in her teeth.

  Violetta repeated it, as to herself, tonelessly; a method of making anold 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 forintrigue, of which she accuses me, develops at a surprising rate. Asregards my beauty," the countess put a tooth of pearl on her soft underlip.

  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, anddescribed the points of a brunette: the thick black banded hair,the full brown eyes, the plastic brows couching over them;--it wasVittoria's face: Violetta was a flower of colour, fair, with but oneshade of dark tinting on her brown eye-brows and eye-lashes, as youmay see a strip of night-cloud cross the forehead of morning. She wasyellow-haired, almost purple-eyed, so rich was the blue of the pupils.Vittoria could be sallow in despondency; but this Violetta never failedin plumpness and freshness. The pencil which had given her aspect theone touch of discord, endowed it with a subtle harmony, like mystery;and Ammiani remembered his having stood once on the Lido of Venice, andeyed the dawn across the Adriatic, and dreamed that Violetta was born ofthe loveliness and held in her bosom the hopes of morning. He dreamed ofit 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.

&n
bsp; "Take me to your mother," she said. "I loathe to hear firing and bealone."

  Ammiani threw up the window. There was a stir of lamps and torchesbelow, and the low sky hung red. Violetta stood quickly thick-shod andhooded.

  "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 arethinking 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! Itwould 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 abarricade distant: it swung open to them, like all the other house-doorswhich were, or wished to be esteemed, true to the cause, and hospitabletoward 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 thoughtof her as a shameless coquette. "When I need a refuge? Is not Milanin 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 ofVittoria's strange and sudden devotion to the king.

  Rainy dawn and the tongues of the churches ushered in the last day ofstreet fighting. Ammiani found Romara and Colonel Corte at the head ofstrong bodies of volunteers, well-armed, ready to march for the Porta'rosa. All three went straight to the house where the ProvisionalGovernment sat, and sword in hand denounced Count Medole as a traitorwho sold his country to the king. Corte dragged him to the window tohear the shouts for the Republic. Medole wrote their names down one byone, and said, "Shall I leave the date vacant?" They put themselvesat the head of their men, and marched in the ringing of the bells. Thebells were their sacro-military music. Barto Rizzo was off to make aspring at the Porta Ticinese. Students, peasants, noble youths of thebest 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 bycannon and the blunt snap of musketry volleys; dull, savage responses,as of a wounded great beast giving short howls and snarls by theinterminable over-roaring of a cataract. Messengers from the gates camerunning to the quiet centre of the city, where cool men discoursed andplotted. Great news, big lies, were shouted:--Carlo Alberto thunderedin the plains; the Austrians were everywhere retiring; the Marshal wasa prisoner; the flag of surrender was on the citadel! These things werefor the ears of thirsty women, diplomatists, and cripples.

  Countess Ammiani and Countess d'Isorella sat together throughout theagitation of the day.

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

  Countess Ammiani was too well used to defeat to believe readily invictory, and had shrouded her head in resignation too long to hope forwhat she craved. Her hands were joined softly in her lap. Her visage hadthe same unmoved expression when she conversed with Violetta as when shelistened to the ravings of the Corso.

  Darkness came, and the bells ceased not rolling by her open windows: theclouds were like mists of conflagration.

  She would not have the windows closed. The noise of the city had becomefamiliar 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 enteredthe room neat and trim as a cavalier dressed for social evening duty,saying with his fine tact, "We are all well;" and after talking likea gazette of the Porta Tosa taken by the volunteers, Barto Rizzo'soccupation of the gate opening on the Ticino, and the bursting of thePorta Camosina by the freebands of the plains, he handed a letter toCountess Ammiani.

  "Carlo is on the march to Bergamo and Brescia, with Corte, Sana, andabout fifty of our men," he said.

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

  "Slightly in the hand--you see, he can march," Romara said, laughingat her promptness to suspect a subterfuge, until he thought, "Now, whatdoes 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. Shewas tearless. Violetta helped her to her bed-room under the pretext of adesire to hear the contents of the letter.

  That night, which ended the five days of battle in Milan, while fireswere 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 intothe outer land.