Stradone Porta Nuova, as if he had reached a marked limit of his popular
customers.

This isolation of the rulers of Lombardy had commenced in Milan, but,
owing to particular causes, was not positively defined there as it was in
Verona. War was already rageing between the Veronese ladies and the
officers of Austria. According to the Gallic Terpsichorean code, a lady
who permits herself to make election of her partners and to reject
applicants to the honour of her hand in the dance, when that hand is
disengaged, has no just ground of complaint if a glove should smite her
cheek. The Austrians had to endure this sort of rejection in Ballrooms.
On the promenade their features were forgotten. They bowed to statues.
Now, the officers of Austria who do not belong to a Croat regiment, or to
one drawn from any point of the extreme East of the empire, are commonly
gentlemanly men; and though they can be vindictive after much irritation,
they may claim at least as good a reputation for forbearance in a
conquered country as our officers in India. They are not ill-humoured,
and they are not peevishly arrogant, except upon provocation. The
conduct of the tender Italian dames was vexatious. It was exasperating
to these knights of the slumbering sword to hear their native waltzes
sounding of exquisite Vienna, while their legs stretched in melancholy
inactivity on the Piazza pavement, and their arms encircled no ductile
waists. They tried to despise it more than they disliked it, called
their female foes Amazons, and their male by a less complimentary title,
and so waited for the patriotic epidemic to pass.

A certain Captain Weisspriess, of the regiment named after a sagacious
monarch whose crown was the sole flourishing blossom of diplomacy,
particularly distinguished himself by insisting that a lady should
remember him in public places. He was famous for skill with his weapons.