caffès I had seen—could easily be divided into
three sections: Austrian officers, Milanese
citizens, and the landlord (the padrone) and his
busy staff of waiters.

There—at a sort of idealised bar built up with
ice tins, massy coffee-cups, trays for change,
lemonade bottles, little receptacles for the
sugar, and silvery clear tumblers of water,
which the Italians drink to correct the biliousness
and heat of coffee—sat the landlord, playing
legerdemain tricks with silver coins, hauling
in and dealing out copper change; and there
were the waiters in perpetual ebb and flow,
bringing in empty cups, or loading trays
with smoking cupfuls for some expectant
sour-faced Austrian captain. The padrone
looked like a male Fortune, distributing gifts
and favours, as he tore asunder rolls, or filled up
small decanters of clarety Chiavenna wine.
The Milanese citizens there was no mistaking,
with their gay, flippant, uneasy manner, and
dark pale faces, rather effeminate in character.
Each had his little paper flag or newspaper
fastened to a strop handle; each his smoking
fragrant coffee-cup, tray of sugar, and tumbler
of water. Some, on their marble circles, were
excavating the strawberry ice's melting rose;
some discoursed with frivolous enthusiasm about
the last song or the opera; others, with bows of
greeting or departing, courteously meant for the
entire company, worked in and out the swinging
door. Amongst them, however, I saw a few of
our own brave English, honest red-and-whites,
contrasting with the pale olive of the Milanese.
Then there was a Dutchman, in white hat, and
with vacant, light blue eyes; there were some
couriers, with side letter-pouches; some spies
and bearded Americans; some Prussians, bearded
and all a-stare.

But, in all the Milanese I saw one predominant,
irrestrainable feeling of alarm, distrust, and
concealed hatred for their conquerors. They sat
away from the officers; who eyed them with
contemptuous defiance, which, though only
conveyed by the eyes, was as insolent as
if a sword-hilt had been touched or a pistol
cocked. Yes, here I was seeing the old
story—the old quarrel from the old cause—
the injured hating because they were injured,
the injurer hating because he knew that he was
hated. Here were the Saxon and Norman, the
Russian and Circassian, the Tartar and the
Chinaman, over again. Let a drunken man shout
out a word, and death in a moment would be in
our midst. There was not a gesture or motion
of either the black-coated Milanese or the white-clad
Austrians but was significant of hatred. If
the glass door opened and an itinerant blind
guitar-player came in, led by a ragged boy, and
groped about each of the tables for alms—for
"qualche-cosa," for "the little money," for "the
very small money, for the love of Heaven"
—the surly Austrians would go on in their knots
of guard-room talk and pay no heed to the old
man's misery, unless some young curled darling
of the Vienna drawing-rooms might pull down
his great trailing flaxen moustaches and throw a
curse—a "Potztausend" or "Henker"—at the
old grey head: or a fat general, padded and
stiff with pride and insolence, twist round his
ponderous steel sword, so that it flapped against
the beggar and warned him off; and as sure as
this happened, when the old man, completing his
itinerary, reached the Milanese tables, he would
be received with words of kindness and
sympathy, and trays of change would be poured into
his hat with a kindly "God be with you!" If an
Italian accidentally knocked a sugar-tray off
his table, or clashed a spoon unseemingly loud,
or kept a paper too long, there were instantly a
dozen fierce Austrian eyes turned devouringly
upon him: not for long, for that would have
implied interest, but with a hasty, insolent, martinet
scornfulness that seemed to augur danger to the
citizen whom insult or threat could goad into a
duel or into some overt act of rebellion.

Nor were the Italians one whit behind in
demonstrating their scorn and hatred for the
Tedesci—the Goths. If a white-coat entered
with a more than usual swagger, or with any
tendency to vinous gaiety, there was no defying
laugh, or hiss, or circulating joke. Still the
Italian heads would certainly bend closer
together, and when the heads separated, there was
a very malign and vexatious smile on the features
of them all. If an Austrian dropped his hat,
or swept off a glass with his heavy white
gloves, out came the stinging smile again. On
neither side was there an absence of
restraint, though the Austrians bore the
surveillance defiantly, the Italians apprehensively.
The landlord inclined to neither party; but,
perhaps, on the whole, he was a little too
obsequious to that truculent, heavy-jawed Austrian
general, alone at the table to the left, balancing
his spoon on the edge of his thick white coffee-cup;
from which a soft fragrant steam rose
like the smoke from a gun around his close
iron-grey hair, and lined and stubborn brow.

All these signs of the antipathy of races I
took in very slowly, refreshing myself at times
with the kindly scraps of Italian greetings that
kept flowing round and round me. I liked to
hear the "Buona notte," the "Grazia" of the
waiters, and the solemn "Addio." I had got
tired of the fops, the fools, and slaves, who keep
Italy enslaved, prating away of the Scala
news, and of how many hearts Piccolomini had
won or lost since yesterday; and I was glad to
see some sheer human nature, though it might
be an unpleasant aspect of it.

My eyes had nearly worked through every
covert in the room, when I heard a stern cough
—a severe, martinet's cough—drowning for a
moment the waiters' high-pitched, mechanical,
abbreviated cries to the idealised bar of "Una
tazz', col lat!" "Caffé nero, Numero Tre!"
"Una tazz'!"—I found it proceeded from a
cruel-looking, hard-featured Austrian general
sitting by himself as "Numero Due," in a quiet
corner lying at my back. It required no great
discernment to see he was an officer in high
command, for there was a buzz among the
subalterns as he entered; and now, as I turned