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 ladie