de, almost hidden by the
overhanging chestnut-trees. "That," said he, "is the Villa Spinola. It
was from there, after a supper with his friend Vecchi, that Garibaldi
sailed on his expedition to Marsala. A sort of decent secrecy was
maintained as to the departure of the expedition; but the cheers of
those on shore, as the boats pulled off, told that the brave buccaneers
carried with them the heartfelt good wishes of their countrymen."
Wandering on in his talk from the campaign of Sicily and Calabria,
my companion spoke of the last wild freak of Garibaldi and the day of
Aspromonte, and finally of the hero's imprisonment at Varignano, in the
Gulf of Spezia.

It appeared from his account that the poor wounded sufferer would have
fared very ill, had it not been for the provident kindness and care of
his friends in England, who supplied him with everything he could want
and a great deal he could by no possibility make use of. Wine of
every kind, for instance, was largely sent to one who was a confirmed
water-drinker, and who, except when obliged by the impure state of the
water, never ventured to taste wine. If now and then the zealous anxiety
to be of service had its ludicrous side--and packages arrived of which
all the ingenuity of the General's followers failed to detect what the
meaning might be--there was something very noble and very touching in
this spontaneous sympathy of a whole people, and so Garibaldi felt it.

The personal homage of the admirers--the worshippers they might be
called--was, however, an infliction that often pushed the patience of
Garibaldi's followers to its limit, and would have overcome the gentle
forbearance of any other living creature than Garibaldi himself. They
came in shoals. Steamboats and diligences were crammed with them, and
the boatmen of Spezia plied as thriving a trade that summer as though
Garibaldi were a saint, at whose shrine the devout of all Europe came to
worship. In vain obstacles were multiplied and difficulties to entrance
invented. In vain it was declared that only a certain number of visitors
were daily admitted, and that the number was already complete. In vain
the doctors announced that the General's condition was prejudiced, and
his feverish state increased, by these continual invasions. Each new
arrival was sure to imagine that there was something special or peculiar
in his case to make him an exception to any rule of exclusion.

"I knew Garibaldi in Monte Video. You