Further distracting Austrian band-music was going by.  This time it was a regiment of Italians in the white and blue uniform.  Carlo and Luciano leaned over the balcony, smoking, and scanned the marching of their fellow-countrymen in the livery of servitude.

‘They don’t step badly,’ said one; and the other, with a smile of melancholy derision, said, ‘We are all brothers!’

Following the Italians came a regiment of Hungarian grenadiers, tall, swam-faced, and particularly light-limbed men, looking brilliant in the clean tight military array of Austria.  Then a squadron of blue hussars, and Croat regiment; after which, in the midst of Czech dragoons and German Uhlans and blue Magyar light horsemen, with General officers and aides about him, the veteran Austrian Field-Marshal rode, his easy hand and erect figure and good-humoured smile belying both his age and his reputation among Italians.  Artillery, and some bravely-clad horse of the Eastern frontier, possibly Serb, wound up the procession.  It gleamed down the length of the Corso in a blinding sunlight; brass helmets and hussar feathers, white and violet surcoats, green plumes, maroon capes, bright steel scabbards, bayonet-points,—­as gallant a show as some portentously-magnified summer field, flowing with the wind, might be; and over all the banner of Austria—­the black double-headed eagle ramping on a yellow ground.  This was the flower of iron meaning on such a field.

The two young men held their peace.  Countess Ammiani had pushed her chair back into a dark corner of the room, and was sitting there when they looked back, like a sombre figure of black marble.

CHAPTER XVII

IN THE PIAZZA D’ARMI

Carlo and Luciano followed the regiments to the Piazza d’Armi, drawn after them by that irresistible attraction to youths who have as yet had no shroud of grief woven for them—­desire to observe the aspect of a brilliant foe.

The Piazza d’Armi was the field of Mars of Milan, and an Austrian review of arms there used to be a tropical pageant.  The place was too narrow for broad manoeuvres, or for much more than to furnish an inspection of all arms to the General, and a display (with its meaning) to the populace.  An unusually large concourse of spectators lined the square, like a black border to a vast bed of flowers, nodding now this way, now that.  Carlo and Luciano passed among the groups, presenting the perfectly smooth faces of young men of fashion, according to the universal aristocratic pattern handed down to querulous mortals from Olympus—­the secret of which is to show a triumphant inaction of the heart and the brain, that are rendered positively subservient to elegance of limb.  They knew the chances were in favour of their being arrested at any instant.  None of the higher members of the Milanese aristocracy were visible; the people looked sullen.  Carlo was