A cry of “Arms!” rang down the length of the Corso.

He started to his feet thankfully.

“Take me to your mother,” she said.  “I loathe to hear firing and be alone.”

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

“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 are thinking 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!  It would 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 a barricade distant:  it swung open to them, like all the other house-doors which were, or wished to be esteemed, true to the cause, and hospitable toward 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 thought of her as a shameless coquette.  “When I need a refuge?  Is not Milan in 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 of Vittoria’s strange and sudden devotion to the king.

Rainy dawn and the tongues of the churches ushered in the last day of street fighting.  Ammiani found Romara and Colonel Corte at the head of strong bodies of volunteers, well-armed, ready to march for the Porta ’rosa.  All three went straight to the house where the Provisional Government sat, and sword in hand denounced Count Medole as a traitor who sold his country to the king.  Corte dragged him to the window to hear the shouts for the Republic.  Medole wrote their names down one by one, and said, “Shall I leave the date vacant?” They put themselves at the head of their men, and marched in the ringing of the bells.  The bells were their sacro-military music.  Barto Rizzo was off to make a spring at the Porta Ticinese.  Students, peasants, noble youths of the best 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 by cannon and the blunt snap of musketry volleys; dull, savage responses, as of a wounded great beast giving short howls and snarls