My first acquaintance with him was through my very old, and very highly valued, loved, and esteemed friend, Jessie White Mario.  The Garibaldi culte has been with her truly and literally the object (apart from her devoted love for her husband, an equally ardent worshipper at the same shrine) for which she has lived, and for which she has again and again affronted death.  For she accompanied him in all his Italian campaigns as a hospital nurse, and on many occasions rendered her inestimable services in that capacity under fire.  If Peard has been called “Garibaldi’s Englishman,” truly Jessie White Mario deserves yet more emphatically the title of “Garibaldi’s Englishwoman.”  She has published a large life of Garibaldi, which is far and away the best and most trustworthy account of the man and his wonderful works.  She is not blind to the spots on the sun of her adoration, nor does she seek to conceal the fact that there were such spots, but she is a true and loyal worshipper all the same.

Her husband was—­alas! that I should write so; for no Indian wife’s life was ever more ended by her suttee than Jessie Mario’s life has practically been ended by her husband’s untimely death!—­Alberto Mario was among the, I fear, few exceptions to Peard’s remarks on the men who were around Garibaldi.  He was not only a man of large literary culture, a brave soldier, an acute politician, a formidable political adversary, and a man of perfect and incorruptible integrity, but he would have been considered in any country and in any society in Europe a very perfect gentleman.  He was in political opinion a consistent and fearlessly outspoken Republican.  He and I therefore differed toto coelo.  But our differences never diminished our, I trust, mutual esteem, nor our friendly intercourse.  But he was a born frondeur.  He edited during his latter years a newspaper at Rome, which was a thorn in the side of the authorities.  I remember his being prosecuted and condemned for persistently speaking of the Pope in his paper as “Signor Pecci.”  He was sentenced to imprisonment.  But all the Government wanted was his condemnation; and he was never incarcerated.  But he used to go daily to the prison and demand the execution of his sentence.  The gaoler used to shut the door in his face, and he narrated the result of his visit in the next day’s paper!

It was as Jessie Mario’s friend then, that I first knew Garibaldi.

One morning at the villa I then possessed, at Ricorboli, close to Florence, a maid-servant came flying into the room, where I was still in bed at six o’clock in the morning, crying out in the utmost excitement, “C’e il Generale! c’e il Generale; e chiede di lei, signore!”—­“Here’s the General! here’s the General!  And he is asking for you, sir!” She spoke as if there was but one general in all the world.  But there was hardly any room in Florence at that time where her words would not have been understood as well as I understood them.