Then, starting off for the Quirinal, the crowd came rolling down by the Church of La Trinità dei Monti, and through the Via Sistina, where I hastened to join it, and where it stopped before the house in which Signor Crispi modestly occupies a third-floor flat. In compliance with the clamours of the mob, the ex-premier, the advocate and author of Italy’s share in the Triple Alliance, presented himself on his balcony, and bowed his acknowledgments to the cheering mass below; but, declining in the circumstances to make a speech, he only waved his hand, and pointed in the direction of the Quirinal, to which, accordingly, the multitude now again headed with tumultuous haste. After rushing up the flight of steps leading to the Quirinal, we found the spacious area in front of the Royal Palace already filled with similar contingents of the populace from other parts of the city; some of the demonstrationists having even clambered up and taken their stand on the pedestals of the equine masterpieces of Phidias, familiar to all visitors to Rome, while a very considerable element in the vast assemblage was formed by the black-robed and tonsured gentlemen from the other side of the river, who had come to witness the birth of events which might be pregnant with consequences for them and their aspirations. And from these priestly figures, with their pale and pensive faces, I could not help letting my eye wander across the intervening valley to the lofty windows of the Vatican, where perchance the self-imprisoned successor of St. Peter was trying, with the aid even of a telescope, to make out the meaning of all this popular commotion in front of the palace of the royal inheritor of all his worldly glory—to make out the meaning of it all, and wonder whether the stirring events now being fashioned in the crucible of war might possibly result in restoring to him some shreds and patches of his temporal power.