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 by the interminable over-roaring of a cataract.  Messengers from the gates came running to the quiet centre of the city, where cool men discoursed and plotted.  Great news, big lies, were shouted:—­Carlo Alberto thundered in the plains; the Austrians were everywhere retiring; the Marshal was a prisoner; the flag of surrender was on the citadel!  These things were for the ears of thirsty women, diplomatists, and cripples.

Countess Ammiani and Countess d’Isorella sat together throughout the agitation of the day.

The life prayed for by one seemed a wisp of straw flung on this humming furnace.

Countess Ammiani was too well used to defeat to believe readily in victory, and had shrouded her head in resignation too long to hope for what she craved.  Her hands were joined softly in her lap.  Her visage had the same unmoved expression when she conversed with Violetta as when she listened to the ravings of the Corso.

Darkness came, and the bells ceased not rolling by her open windows:  the clouds were like mists of conflagration.

She would not have the windows closed.  The noise of the city had become familiar and akin to the image of her boy.  She sat there cloaked.

Her heart went like a time-piece to the two interrogations to heaven:  “Alive?—­or dead?”

The voice of Luciano Romara was that of an angel’s answering.  He entered the room neat and trim as a cavalier dressed for social evening duty, saying with his fine tact, “We are all well;” and after talking like a gazette of the Porta Tosa taken by the volunteers, Barto Rizzo’s occupation of the gate opening on the Ticino, and the bursting of the Porta Camosina by the freebands of the plains, he handed a letter to Countess Ammiani.

“Carlo is on the march to Bergamo and Brescia, with Corte, Sana, and about fifty of our men,” he said.

“And is wounded—­where?” asked Violetta.