en 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 cea