“They to pass a vote of censure on Francesco Crispi! The whole lot of them are not worth one finger of his hand!” he said.
“Everybody knows that it was the result of a political cabal against Crispi.”
“No, not everybody; some are wholly ignorant and others forget! We who were with him in Sicily, where he was as the right hand of Garibaldi, know the man for what he is. He has been insulted, and his friends will be slow to forget the insult.”
“You also were in Sicily with Garibaldi?”
“I am one of the Thousand.”
It was as if he had said “I am one of the Three Hundred of Thermopylæ,” or the “Six Hundred of Balaclava!” It was electrifying to find oneself in the company of one of those “few and good men” who sailed with Garibaldi from Quarto, on the 5th of May, 1860, landed six days later at Marsala under the protection of the British gunboats Intrepid and Argus, made the glorious march to Palermo, and freed Sicily and Naples from the hateful yoke of the Bourbons.
“I have heard that you of the Thousand loved your chief as if he had been your father; is this true?”
“Our acts, not merely our words, proved it to be true. We would have died for him to the last man. Even the women and priests wanted to take up arms and follow Garibaldi. You know the story of the nuns? A whole convent of nuns, from the old mother abbess to the youngest novice, gave him the kiss of peace, they would not be denied!” He grew visibly younger as he talked, there was fire in the man; it took but the breath of our sympathy to blow the embers to a flame.
“Was that scar on your cheek made by an Austrian or a French bayonet?” He rubbed the old wound with a stiff hand smiling grimly to himself. “By neither—worse yet! At Calatafini, when the royal troops—they were Neapolitans—had exhausted their cartridges, they threw stones at us. Have you not heard what Garibaldi said of that action? ‘The old misfortune, a fight between Italians, but it proves to me what can be done with this family united.’ One day while the chief was watering his horse at a spring a Franciscan friar suddenly appeared among us. Some of the men tried to arrest him, but he forced his way to the chiefs side, threw himself on his knees, and begged to be taken along with us. There were some who believed him an enemy in disguise, but the man, his name was Fra Pantaleo, did good service and proved true as steel!”
As long as the talk is of the old time our ancient soldier is a hero; when it touches to-day he degenerates into a grumbler. He seems less dissatisfied with the army than with most things modern. “My grandson is serving his four years. Where do you suppose his regiment is quartered? In Milan; that is as it should be, the North and the South must know each other. It is well to send the men of Sicily to Piedmont and the Piedmontese to Sicily. In this manner they may learn that they are before all things Italians.”