To the excited crowd he typified all that their fathers had endured to drive the stranger from their land. The two Cairoli, Nino Bixio, and the heroic figure, wrapped in his poncho, who rides in glory on the Janiculum, visible from every point of Rome, seemed to march by the old man’s side in the imagination of the crowd. Women rushed forward, carrying flowers, and strewed them on the scant grey locks of the old soldier; and children danced in front of him, like little Bacchanals. All hats were off as the old man was borne along, a phantom of himself, a symbol of a heroic past, and still a beacon, flickering but alight, to show the way towards the goal which in his youth had seemed impossible to reach. Slowly the procession rolled along, surging against the houses as an incoming tide swirls up a river, till it reached the Consulate. It halted, and the old Garibaldian, drawing himself up, saluted the Italian colours. The Consul, bare-headed and with tears running down his cheeks, stood for a moment, the centre of all eyes, and then, advancing, tore the flag from off its staff, and, after kissing it, wrapped it round the frail shoulders of the veteran. V WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND A NORTH-EAST haar had hung the city with a pall of grey. It gave an air of hardness to the stone-built houses, blending them with the stone-paved streets, till you could scarce see where the houses ended and the street began. A thin grey dust hung in the air. It coloured everything, and people’s faces all looked pinched with the first touch of autumn cold. The wind, boisterous and gusty, whisked the soot-grimed city leaves about in the high suburb at the foot of a long range of hills, making one think it would be easy to have done with life on such an uncongenial day. Tramways were packed with people of the working class, all of them of the alert, quick-witted type only to be seen in the great city on the Clyde, in all our Empire, and comparable alone to the dwellers in Chicago for dry vivacity.