tion of the
Italians, and their mocking gaiety and reckless levity, is just as
marked as that, between the resolute countenances of the Orsini type,
such as I noticed here, and the frivolous faces, which express nothing
but a contemptuous superiority or mere indifference. Faces of this type
were also to be seen among the spectators, or among the delegates who
accompanied the banners inscribed "The Press," "Freethought," "Freedom
for Labour," and so on. Involuntarily I thought, it is this element of
frivolity among one half of the population that brings out a sterner
element of resolution in the other half. The greater, the more general,
this frivolity, the stronger and fiercer must be the passionate energy
of those who would prevail against it. And through my brain there
coursed reminiscences of the past history of Italy, with its contrasts
of strange levity and dark purpose. Backward and forward my thoughts
swayed, from Brutus to Orsini, from Catiline to Caesar Borgia, from
Lucullus to Leo X., from Savonarola to Garibaldi. Meanwhile the company
got itself in motion, the banners streamed out, loud-voiced
street-vendors offered for sale leaflets and pamphlets containing
accounts of Mansana's career, and the procession passed into the Via
Felice. Silence greeted it as it moved on. The lofty houses showed few
spectators at this early hour, fewer still as the procession turned
into the Via Venti-Settembre, past the Quirinal; but the onlookers were
somewhat more numerous as the party came down into the Forum and passed
out of the city by the Colosseum to the Porta Giovanni. Outside the
gate the hearse, which had been provided by the Municipality and driven
by its servants, was in waiting. This hearse was immediately set in
motion. Close behind it walked two young men, one in civil costume, the
other in the uniform of an officer of the Bersaglieri. Both were tall,
spare, muscular, with small heads and low foreheads; resembling one
another in build and features, and yet infinitely different. They were
the sons of the dead Mansana.

I could recall them as boys of thirteen or fourteen, and the episode
round which my recollection of them gathered was curious enough: I
remembered their old grandmother throwing stones at these boys as they
stood laughing, beyond her reach. I had a sudden distinct vision of the
old woman's keen, angry eyes, of her sinewy, wrinkled hands, her grey
bristling hair round her coffee-coloured face; and no