Long years afterwards, one of the “boys” described the last evening of Father Mastai at the Asilo. He had as yet said nothing to them of his approaching departure, but at supper they noticed that he seemed very sad. When the meal was over and they were about to leave the table, he motioned to them to sit down again, as he had something to say to them. Then he told them that the next day he must leave them, to travel far away on the business of the Church. There were a hundred and twenty boys, big and little, in the hall, and there broke from them one simultaneous cry of grief. Sobbing and wailing, they threw themselves upon him, the little ones climbing up into his arms and clinging to his knees, others catching at his garments as if to hold him back by force, and those who could not reach him through the press lifting up their voices in supplication that the “Caro Padre” would not leave them. The Father wept, too, as he caressed and embraced the “piccolini,” and, when at last he tore himself away and shut himself up in his room, a number of the older boys broke in and insisted on staying with him all night. The dear patient man did not resent thus being robbed of his rest; he let them have their way, and talked to them long and earnestly of their present duties and their future lives. He would return some day, and how eagerly he would enquire for every one by name, how rejoiced he would be at a good report, how immeasurably grieved at a bad one. With the dawn he had to leave them, and, as the narrator said, “We were orphans more than ever before.” Great as was the grief of “Tata Giovanni’s” boys on losing their beloved Director, it did not equal the despair and indignation of Countess Mastai when she learnt that her son had been picked out for a journey which was full of perils and hardships so late as twenty years ago, and in those early days was veritably appalling. To the ardent young priest, this fact had only added to the readiness he felt in carrying out the Pope’s wishes; he asked nothing better than to suffer in such a cause, but his mother, without saying anything to him, flew to Cardinal Consalvi, then Secretary of State, and implored that the appointment might be cancelled. Pius VII, however, refused to yield to her entreaties, and, when Father Mastai came to receive his final blessing before departing, he told him of the Countess’s request and added, “I assured her that you would return safe and sound.”