Garibaldi evidently had much sympathy with and admiration for Victor Emmanuel, the Re Galantuomo whose bluff, soldierlike, sportsman’s nature could not but appeal to him; with the wily, albeit successful, diplomacy of Cavour he would naturally be less in accord, nor indeed did Cavour behave generously to him or to his devoted soldiers, whom he refused to incorporate in the army; but against Rattazzi his case was even stronger; led on and encouraged by that statesman’s Machiavellian wiles he was finally betrayed and the result was Aspromonte, when to their everlasting shame the soldiers of Italy fired upon their liberator. Still, in speaking even of these men he uttered no complaint, gave no sign of bearing a grudge. He was far too noble for that. That he would fight all men knew, if there should be good cause, but to rail at an enemy, even at that worst form of enemy, the enemy in the camp, was not in his nature. I am often asked what it was that most impressed me in Garibaldi. The keynote of his character seemed to be simplicity—simplicity combined with great dignity. There was about him nothing of the _condottiere_, none of the swagger of the free-lance. A spice and no more of Don Quixote; but we must remember that the Don himself was a great gentleman, brave and tender and generous as a gentleman should be. At dusk our sportsman came home; very tired after a long clamber over granite rock and fell, through scrub and brush of myrtle, juniper and sweet-smelling bushes, without having seen the horn of a goat or the ear of a jackass. He brought back a very unseductive account of the little island. Garibaldi’s kingdom was a Lilliput about six miles long by two broad; the highest Alp about seven hundred feet above the sea level; not a river or even a brook to be seen. Had there not been delicious springs and a few puddles, life would have been impossible for man or beast. Just a barren rocky waste, a most inhospitable wilderness. Scanty cultivation and few hands to work, had there been work for them; a dreary home enough; but bare as it was, Garibaldi loved it, and it said more to his heart than the Garden of the Hesperides with its golden fruit. As the day waned our surroundings became more and more Homeric. When the evening meal came, supper or dinner, we were really in Ithaca—Ulysses, we three Englishmen, the secretary and a chosen retainer or two were gathered together in a long, narrow room, with dark wooden wainscot and a whitewashed ceiling, much besmoked.