Regolo, with the greater number of the Three Hundred, seeing they could do nothing of themselves, for some time, towards the liberation of Rome, had enlisted in the ranks of the Pontifical troops, according to the orders received from outside, and were active in influencing the Romans to demand the honor of conducting the right wing in the order of march. This being disputed, they mutinied, and ill-treated their officers. General D------ was sent with a company of foreigners to restore order, but the strife was almost as serious as in a pitched battle, and the foreigners fled discomfited to their barracks. The chief instigator of the mutiny was our old acquaintance, Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons. Being released from the pains and penalties inflicted upon him by the Inquisition, which he had sustained with a stoicism worthy of the olden times, he resolved to be revenged upon his persecutors at the first opportunity, and did not fail to make good use of this occasion. At the head of his dragoons (for he had been restored to his post), sabre in hand, he plunged into the thickest of the fray, and made serious havoc amongst the foreign troops. The affair over, knowing what to expect at the hands of his masters, he set out from Rome without dismounting, accompanied by the better part of his men, sought out the proscribed in the forest, who received him most cordially, and heard with satisfaction the account of his adventures in the capital. CHAPTER XXXIX. MATRIMONY Of a surety, the most holy and closest tie in all the human family is marriage. It binds together two beings of an opposite sex for life, and makes them, if they be but worthy of that condition, supremely happy. I say if they be worthy advisedly, because that solemn rite should only be contracted with the mutual purpose that each is to seek the happiness of the other, and such a union has for its base true love--that is, celestial love, which the ancients rightly distinguished from sensual passion, the former being that love of the soul which no worldly or selfish views can ever influence. Even before the marriage contract its anticipation does much to soften and improve the character of each, from the new feeling that they must not fail to contribute to each other's welfare. The very atmosphere of happiness makes married life nobler than lonely life, while the love of parents for their offspring renders them gentle and forbearing, and indulgent to their own first, and finally to others, whose good-will they wish to win. Unfaithfulness, however, is, unhappily, too frequently an incident of modern marriages, but they of either sex who sin against that loyalty in wedlock which should bind both indissolubly, unless hardened in vice beyond all hope, feel such remorse that they would, if they could, return to their former purity by any sacrifice. But truth, among other things, should suffice to fortify the good against temptation and dishonor, which brings shame and ruin to the soul.