He was not to be seen; but I tried to console myself by looking over to his little island of Caprera, near the Sardinian coast. Dumas’ Life of Garibaldi set my mind on fire with the story of this man. My inn-keeper at Naples, too, had been with the patriot in all his campaigns. Listening to him talk was as entertaining as reading Homer. [Illustration: Garibaldi.--_Page 96._] [Illustration: King Victor Emmanuel.--_Page 96._] The scene, when Garibaldi came to Rome from the solitude of his little island, to enter parliament the next year, was worthy the brush of a great artist. The Italy that he had made, and presented to Victor Emmanuel, had seemed to have forgotten the old man of Caprera. He was feeble and poor and rheumatic. Suddenly all Italy, _his_ Italy, remembered him. The King sent a gilded chariot drawn by six white horses, to take him through the streets of Rome. As the old cripple, wearing his Garibaldi mantle, limped into the Parliament house, every member rose to do him honor. I would rather have been Garibaldi in Rome that day, than to have been Cæsar, riding along the same streets, with slaves and subjugated peoples in his train. _March 5._--Looked at numbers of the historic Roman palaces. The one that affected me most was the dingy and neglected old building in the Ghetto, where the Cenci lived. This immense and half-empty pile, in an obscure part of Rome, would attract nobody, save for the story of a beautiful girl, immortalized by the pencil of Guido Reni. All the time I was within the building, my mind was on a scene in a prison, where this same girl hung in torments before her cruel tormentors, crying to be let down, and she “would tell it all”--the killing of her own father. And then came that morning before daylight, the morning of her execution. Herself and an artist are in a cell. A little candle burns, the executioners wait outside the door, and Guido Reni, to make her picture striking, drapes a sheet about her head and shoulders, while all the time she is waiting there for death. Saddest tale of Rome! Next morning I called at the American Legation. Mr. W----, the secretary, affected the utmost ignorance and indifference as to who I was, or whether my card would finally reach Mr. Marsh, our Minister. I asked him to hand the card back to me, and walked over to the Rospigliosi palace, where Mr. Marsh promptly received me, and in the kindest manner. I was in the presence of a statesman and a scholar--not a snob. Mr. Marsh had followed the Italian court all about Italy--to Turin, Florence, Rome. He stood high in the estimation of the Italian court and foreign diplomats. His genius and scholarship were now casting luster on the American name. “Don’t tell anybody at home what a palace I live in,” he said to me, jocosely. “They will think me an aristocrat over there, whereas I am the plainest of republicans. Here in Rome a palace is just as cheap as anything. Everybody lives in a palace here.”