“Long live Italy!” shouted Andrea. throwing his hat into the air.
Nobody said a word.
Andrea picked up the ring, handed it to the magistrate and said:
“Keep this ring in memory of me and this day, on which you did me a wrong.”
He seized Gertrude’s hand and kissed it; climbed up the mountain and disappeared; was seen again and vanished in a cloud. After a while he reappeared, high above them; but this time it was merely his gigantic shadow thrown on a cloud. And there he stood, shaking a threatening fist at the village.
“That was Satan himself,” said the colonel.
“No, it was an Italian,” said the postmaster.
“Since it is late in the evening,” said the magistrate, “I’ll tell you an official secret, which will be read in all the papers to-morrow.”
“Hear! hear!”
“We have received information that when it became known that the Emperor of France was made a prisoner at Sedan, the Italians drove the French troops out of Rome, and that Victor Emanuel is at this moment on his way to the capital.”