s. 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