“Not by any means,” said Wilfrid.

“Mio prigione!” Jenna mouthed with ineffable contemptuousness; “he’ll have time to write his memoirs, as, one of the dogs did.  I remember my mother crying over, the book.  I read it?  Not I!  I never read books.  My father said—­the stout old colonel—­’Prison seems to make these Italians take an interest in themselves.’  ‘Oh!’ says my mother, ’why can’t they be at peace with us?’ ‘That’s exactly the question,’ says my father, ‘we’re always putting to them.’  And so I say.  Why can’t they let us smoke our cigars in peace?”

Jenna finished by assaulting a herd of faces with smoke.

“Pig of a German!” was shouted; and “Porco, porco,” was sung in a scale of voices.  Jenna received a blinding slap across the eyes.  He staggered back; Wilfrid slashed his sword in defence of him.  He struck a man down.  “Blood! blood!” cried the gathering mob, and gave space, but hedged the couple thickly.  Windows were thrown up; forth came a rain of household projectiles.  The cry of “Blood! blood!” was repeated by numbers pouring on them from the issues to right and left.  It is a terrible cry in a city.  In a city of the South it rouses the wild beast in men to madness.  Jenna smoked triumphantly and blew great clouds, with an eye aloft for the stools, basins, chairs, and water descending.  They were in the middle of one of the close streets of old Milan.  The man felled by Wilfrid was raised on strong arms, that his bleeding head might be seen of all, and a dreadful hum went round.  A fire of missiles, stones, balls of wax, lumps of dirt, sticks of broken chairs, began to play.  Wilfrid had a sudden gleam of the face of his Verona assailant.  He and Jenna called “Follow me,” in one breath, and drove forward with sword-points, which they dashed at the foremost; by dint of swift semicirclings of the edges they got through, but a mighty voice of command thundered; the rearward portion of the mob swung rapidly to the front, presenting a scattered second barrier; Jenna tripped on a fallen body, lost his cigar, and swore that he must find it.  A dagger struck his sword-arm.  He staggered and flourished his blade in the air, calling “On!” without stirring.  “This infernal cigar!” he said; and to the mob, “What mongrel of you took my cigar?” Stones thumped on his breast; the barrier-line ahead grew denser.  “I’ll go at them first; you’re bleeding,” said Wilfrid.  They were refreshed by the sound of German cheering, as in approach.  Jenna uplifted a crow of the regimental hurrah of the charge; it was answered; on they went and got through the second fence, saw their comrades, and were running to meet them, when a weighted ball hit Wilfrid on the back of the head.  He fell, as he believed, on a cushion of down, and saw thousands of saints dancing with lamps along cathedral aisles.