the
garb of citizens, volubly and violently Italian in their talk, struck
thrice at the door. Wilfrid perceived Count Lenkenstein among them. The
ladies Bianca, Anna, and Lena issued mantled and hooded between the
lights of two barricade watchfires. Wilfrid stepped after them. They had
the password, for the barricades were crossed. The captain of the
head-barricade in the Corso demurred, requiring a counter-sign.
Straightway he was cut down. He blew an alarm-call, when up sprang a
hundred torches. The band of Germans dashed at the barricade as at the
tusks of a boar. They were picked men, most of them officers, but a
scanty number in the thick of an armed populace. Wilfrid saw the lighted
passage into the great house, and thither, throwing out his arms, he bore
the affrighted group of ladies, as a careful shepherd might do. Returning
to Count Lenkenstein's side, "Where are they?" the count said, in mortal
dread. "Safe," Wilfrid replied. The count frowned at him inquisitively.
"Cut your way through, and on!" he cried to three or four who hung near
him; and these went to the slaughter.

"Why do you stand by me, sir?" said the count. Interior barricades were
pouring their combatants to the spot; Count Lenkenstein was plunged upon
the door-steps. Wilfrid gained half-a-minute's parley by shouting in his
foreign accent, "Would you hurt an Englishman?" Some one took him by the
arm, and helping to raise the count, hurried them both into the house.

"You must make excuses for popular fury in times like these," the
stranger observed.

The Austrian nobleman asked him stiffly for his name. The name of Count
Ammiani was given. "I think you know it," Carlo added.

"You escaped from your lawful imprisonment this day, did you not?--you
and your cousin, the assassin. I talk of law! I might as justly talk of
honour. Who lives here?" Carlo contained himself to answer, "The present
occupant is, I believe, if I have hit the house I was seeking, the
Countess d'Isorella."

"My family were placed here, sir?" Count Lenkenstein inquired of Wilfrid.
But Wilfrid's attention was frozen by the sight of Vittoria's lover. A
wifely call of "Adalbert" from above quieted the count's anxiety.

"Countess d'Isorella," he said. "I know that woman. She belongs to the
secret cabinet of Carlo Alberto--a woman with three edges. Did she not
visit you in prison two weeks ago? I speak to you, Count Ammiani. She
applied to the Archduke and the Marshal for per