It was Luciano Romara.  He stood before them to request that the curtain should be raised.  The officers debated together, and deemed it prudent to yield consent.

Luciano stipulated further that the soldiers were to be withdrawn.

‘On one wing, or on both wings?’ said Captain Weisspriess, twinkling eyes oblique.

‘Out of the house,’ said Luciano.

The officers laughed.

‘You must confess,’ said De Pyrmont, affably, ’that though the drum does issue command to the horse, it scarcely thinks of doing so after a rent in the skin has shown its emptiness.  Can you suppose that we are likely to run when we see you empty-handed?  These things are matters of calculation.’

‘It is for you to calculate correctly,’ said Luciano.

As he spoke, a first surge of the exasperated house broke upon the stage and smote the curtain, which burst into white zigzags, as it were a breast stricken with panic.

Giacinta came running in to her mistress, and cloaked and hooded her hurriedly.

Enamoured; impassioned, Ammiani murmured in Vittoria’s ear:  ’My own soul!’

She replied:  ‘My lover!’

So their first love-speech was interchanged with Italian simplicity, and made a divine circle about them in the storm.

Luciano returned to his party to inform them that they held the key of the emergency.

‘Stick fast,’ he said.  ’None of you move.  Whoever takes the first step takes the false step; I see that.’

‘We have no arms, Luciano.’

‘We have the people behind us.’

There was a fiercer tempest in the body of the house, and, on a sudden, silence.  Men who had invaded the stage joined the Italian guard surrounding Vittoria, telling that the lights had been extinguished; and then came the muffled uproar of universal confusion.  Some were for handing her down into the orchestra, and getting her out through the general vomitorium, but Carlo and Luciano held her firmly by them.  The theatre was a rageing darkness; and there was barely a light on the stage.  ‘Santa Maria!’ cried Giacinta, ’how dreadful that steel does look in the dark!  I wish our sweet boys would cry louder.’  Her mistress, almost laughing, bade her keep close, and be still.  ’Oh! this must be like being at sea,’ the poor creature whined, stopping her ears and shutting her eyes.  Vittoria was in a thick gathering of her defenders; she could just hear that a parley was going on between Luciano and the Austrians.  Luciano made his way back to her.  ‘Quick!’ he said; ’nothing cows a mob like darkness.  One of these officers tells me he knows you, and gives his word of honour—­he’s an Englishman—­to conduct you out:  come.’

Vittoria placed her hands in Carlo’s one instant.  Luciano cleared a space for them.  She heard a low English voice.

’You do not recognize me?  There is no time to lose.  You had another name once, and I have had the honour to call you by it.’