“He received the sacrament! Yes, it was allowed,” a woman of the people murmured in my ear the words with which Rome rang. There had been some who doubted if the Church would permit the supreme unction to be administered. For several days it had been known that while the king lay dying at the Quirinal, across the Tiber at the Vatican, his old adversary, Pope Pius Ninth, had been stricken with mortal illness. With my mother I watched the wonderful funeral _cortège_ pass the American Consulate. There were tears on the roses she threw before the crimson velvet funeral car drawn by six magnificent horses. In the great drama of the _Risorgimento_ she too had played her part. She had, as a girl in her father’s house and as a wife in her husband’s home, received and comforted Italians exiled for Liberty’s sake; she had worked for the cause of Italian liberty with voice and pen. She had labored for Italy, she had rejoiced with her, and now she mourned with “the ransomed land.” Chief among the mourners was Garibaldi, old and ill, who came up from rocky Caprera, where he had lived for some time rather in the shadow. I saw him pass, lying back in a landau, dressed in the traditional gray felt hat and red blouse. His bronze hair and beard were silver now, but his eyes had still the look of a seer. He never for an instant doubted that Italy would fill that larger destiny of which he dreamed. He saw in the death of Victor Emmanuel the opportunity to raise once more the cry for _Italia Irredenta_! “The call of the patriots of Trieste and Trent must find an echo in the hearts of all Italians, and the yoke of Austria, no better than that of the Turk, must once for all be broken from off the necks of our brethren.” Forty years were to pass before Garibaldi’s words were realized.