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