“Certainly, Frank,” Signor Forli said, somewhat surprised; “we shall be in Naples in another three or four days. I am sure Garibaldi will not wait for his troops; he was saying to me yesterday that he was most anxious to enter the city, as he had notice from a friend that Cavour’s party were hard at work trying to organise a general rising of the city before he arrives, and the issue of a manifesto declaring Victor Emmanuel king of Italy and inviting him to come at once. This Garibaldi is determined not to allow. He has from the first always declared that he came in the name of the king, and that when his work was done he would hand over Southern Italy to him. You know his loyalty and absolute disinterestedness; and the idea that he would endeavour to obtain any advantage for himself is absurd.
“If he had chosen, instead of accepting the dictatorship of Sicily he could have been elected king; and assuredly it is the same thing here. He is the people’s hero and saviour; the very name of the King of Sardinia is scarcely known in Sicily, and excites no interest whatever. It is the same thing in Calabria: the enthusiasm is all for Garibaldi, and had he consented to accept the crown he would have been elected unanimously. His wish and hope is to present to Victor Emmanuel Southern Italy cleared of all enemies, complete and undivided; and yet, rather than so receive it, Cavour, Farina, and the rest of them are intriguing at Naples, as they intrigued in Sicily, in order that the king should appear to take this wide accession of territory as the expression of the will of the people, and not from the hand of Garibaldi.
“It is pitiful to see such mean jealousy. In time, no doubt, even had there not been a Garibaldi, this would have come about, but it might have been fifteen or twenty years hence; and had it been done by means of a royal army, France and Austria would probably both have interfered and demanded compensation, and so left Italy still incomplete. It is the speed with which the change has been effected, and I may say the admiration with which Europe has viewed it, and the assurance of the government at Turin that it has had no hand in this business, but has taken all means in its power to prevent it, that has paralysed opposition. I trust that all these intrigues will fail, and that Garibaldi may have the sole honour that he craves—namely, that of presenting the kingdom of the two Sicilies to Victor Emmanuel. Should Cavour’s intrigues succeed, and Garibaldi be slighted, it will be the blackest piece of ingratitude history has ever recorded. However, why do you ask ‘shall we go on to Naples?’ I thought that you were burning to get there.”
“I am; but you see we are passing, without time for making any investigations, many places where my father, if alive, may be in prison. At Potenza, for example, I know that a large number of political prisoners are confined, and doubtless it is the same at many other towns. I cannot bear to think of the possibility that he may be in one of these, and that we have passed him by.”
“I can quite understand your feelings, Frank; but you know we are agreed that it is at Naples we shall most probably find him, if he is still alive. Bad as the prisons may be in other places, they are more loosely managed; there would be fewer conveniences for keeping one prisoner apart from the others, while there are ample opportunities in those of Naples for many to be kept in secret confinement. Certainly I was so kept myself at Reggio; but that was a royal fortress, and though used as a prison for political offenders, there were no malefactors there. In the jails in the provincial towns this could not be so, and I know that prisoners are all mixed up together, save those who can afford to pay, who can live in comparative comfort, while the rest are herded together anyhow, and can scarcely exist upon the rations allowed to them. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that it is at Naples that we must look for your father. Now that we have arrived at Salerno, and that, as we hear, the Neapolitan troops are falling back from the capital, and taking up their position round Capua and Gaeta, there can be little doubt that Garibaldi will, in a day or two, go forward. There is, indeed, nothing to prevent you and me from going by train there to-morrow, if you lay aside that red shirt and scarf, and dress in clothes that will attract no attention. But I do not see that anything would be gained by it; you will still have to wait until Garibaldi is supreme there, and his orders are respected, and you may be sure that, as soon as he is in power, his first step will be to throw open the prisons and release all who are charged with political offences, to order these hideous dungeons to be permanently closed, and to thoroughly reorganise the system. You have told me that he did this at Palermo, and he will certainly do the same at Naples.”
Four days later the king issued a farewell notice to the people, and left Naples for Gaeta; and three hours afterwards Romano, his minister, who had drawn up his farewell, addressed the following telegram to Garibaldi:—
“To the Invincible Dictator of the two Sicilies.—Naples expects you with anxiety to confide to you her future destiny.—Entirely yours, Liborio Romano.”
A subsequent letter informed him that at a meeting of the ministers it had been decided that the Prince of Alessandria, Syndic of Naples, should go to Salerno, with the commander of the national guard, to make the arrangements for his entry into the capital. Garibaldi, however, did not wait. Were he to arrive at the head of his troops, the Neapolitan garrisons of the castle and other strong places in the city might oppose him by force; and, as ever, wishing to avoid bloodshed, he determined to rely solely upon the populace of Naples. He at once ordered a small special train to be prepared.
“I am only taking with me,” he said to Frank, “a few of my staff. You will be one of the number: you have a right to it, not only as the representative of your mother, to whose aid we are largely indebted for our being now here, but for your own personal services. Signor Forli shall also go: he stood by me on the walls of Rome twelve years ago, he has suffered much for his principles, he is your mother’s father, therefore he too shall come.”
There were but four carriages on the little train that left at nine o’clock in the morning on the 7th of September for Naples. Cosenz, and thirteen members of the staff, represented the national army; the remaining seats being occupied by various personal friends and two or three newspaper correspondents.