"My brother Attilio was said to be as beautiful as an angel by all the mothers of Pistoja. Indeed, he was a very handsome little boy, and frequently served my father as a model; thus Attilio's figure appears in more than one of the groups which he contributed to the Great Exhibition at London in 1851.
"Versions of my brother's story have already, as I have stated, appeared in the English newspapers. I now propose to tell you mine.
"Pistoja, our native place, is a Tuscan town, situated amid a fertile country, at the base of the beautiful Apennines. In fancy I can see it still, with its carved cathedral of snowy Carrara marble; its convents and hospitals; its quaint streets of the middle ages; its old and crumbling walls, that were built by Didier, last king of the Lombards, and the clear blue waters of the Ombrone, bordered by chestnut groves, and lands that teem with corn, wine, and oil, all reddened in the setting sun, as I saw them last; and that feature, the blot and blight on all the rest, the accursed Austrian eagle, that floats above its ancient fortress.
"Yes, Pistoja, like too many other Italian towns, had or has an Austrian garrison, and, at the time I refer to—the first months of 1850—all Europe was filled with ardour, interest, and sympathy by the gallant stand made by the Hungarians, under Kossuth, and other chiefs, against their imperial oppressors; and nowhere did their victories and their downfall find a more ready echo than in the hearts of Italians.
"The boys of the Academia de Pistoja, which my brother Attilio and I attended—he was then twelve, and I but ten years of age—held a jubilee with others, on an evil day, when fresh tidings of some new battle came. We received a holiday. I went to fish in the Ombrone, and my brother returned home.
"When, chancing to pass near the palace of the Bishop of Pistoja, where the Austrian commandant, Colonel Count Rudolf de Veinrich, had quartered himself (after expelling our venerable prelate), Attilio saw a number of soldiers in what he considered the Hungarian uniform—brown tunics, embroidered and faced with red.
"When passing the first sentinel, Attilio lifted his little hat and cried:
"'Viva Kossuth! Viva Hongria!'
"'Viva!' replied the sentinel, whose comrades joined in the cry, adding:
"'Eviva—bravo Hongrie!'