The same hand which brought Rinaldo's letter to his brother delivered a
message from Barto Rizzo, bidding Angelo to start at once and head a
stout dozen or so of gallant Swiss. The letter and the message appeared
to be grievous contradictions: one was evidently a note of despair, while
the other sang like a trumpet. But both were of a character to draw him
swiftly on to Milan. He sent word to his Lugano friends, naming a
village among the mountains between Como and Varese, that they might join
him there if they pleased.

Toward nightfall, on the nineteenth of the month, he stood with a small
band of Ticinese and Italian fighting lads two miles distant from the
city. There was a momentary break in long hours of rain; the air was
full of inexplicable sounds, that floated over them like a toning of
multitudes wailing and singing fitfully behind a swaying screen. They
bent their heads. At intervals a sovereign stamp on the pulsation of the
uproar said, distinct as a voice in the ear--Cannon. "Milan's alive!"
Angelo cried, and they streamed forward under the hurry of stars and
scud, till thumping guns and pattering musket-shots, the long big boom of
surgent hosts, and the muffled voluming and crash of storm-bells,
proclaimed that the insurrection was hot. A rout of peasants bearing
immense ladders met them, and they joined with cheers, and rushed to the
walls. As yet no gate was in the possession of the people. The walls
showed bayonet-points: a thin edge of steel encircled a pit of fire.
Angelo resolved to break through at once. The peasants hesitated, but
his own men were of one mind to follow, and, planting his ladder in the
ditch, he rushed up foremost. The ladder was full short; he called out
in German to a soldier to reach his hand down, and the butt-end of a
musket was dropped, which he grasped, and by this aid sprang to the
parapet, and was seized. "Stop," he said, "there's a fellow below with