of bandits in an opera—­yet, to Garibaldi, they seemed the blessed assurance that this people whom he was come to save was ready and willing to be saved.  He received the poor little band with as much rapture as if it had been a powerful army, and, in their turn, the impressionable islanders were enraptured by the affability of the man whom the population of Sicily soon came seriously to consider as a new Messiah.  It is a fact that the people of Southern Italy did believe that Garibaldi had in him something superhuman, only the Bourbon troops looked rather below than above for the source of it.  The picturesque incidents of the historic march were many; one other may be mentioned.  While the chief watered his horse at a spring a Franciscan friar threw himself on his knees, and implored to be allowed to follow him.  Some of the volunteers thought the friar a traitor in disguise, but larger in faith, Garibaldi said:  ’Come with us, you will be our Ugo Bassi.’  Fra Pantaleo proved of no small use to the expedition.

A glance at the map makes clear the military situation.  Garibaldi’s objective was Palermo, and if anything shows his genius as a Condottiere it is this immediate determination to make straight for the capital where the largest number of the enemy’s troops was massed, instead of seeking an illusionary safety for his weak army in the open country.  As the crow flies the distance from Marsala to Palermo is not more than sixty or seventy miles, but the routes being mountainous, the actual ground to be covered is much longer.  About midway lies Calatafimi, where all the roads leading from the eastern coast to Palermo converge, and above it towers the immensely strong position called Pianto dei Romani, from a battle in which the Romans were defeated.  These heights command a vast prospect, and here General Landi, with 3,000 men and four pieces of artillery, prepared to intercept the Garibaldians with every probability of driving them back into the sea.

The royal troops took the offensive towards ten o’clock on the 15th of May.  They met the Red-shirts half way down the mountain, but were driven up it again, inch by inch, till, at about three o’clock, they were back at Pianto dei Romani.  A final vigorous assault dislodged them from this position, and they retreated in disorder to Calatafimi.  Not wishing to tempt fortune further for that day, Garibaldi bivouacqued on the field of battle.  In a letter written to Bertani, on the spur of the moment, he bore witness with a sort of fatherly pride to the courage displayed by the Neapolitans:  ’It was the old misfortune,’ he said, ’a fight between Italians; but it proved to me what can be done with this family when united.  The Neapolitan soldiers, when their cartridges were exhausted, threw stones at us in desperation.’  How then, with much superior numbers and a seemingly impregnable position, did they end in ignominious flight?  The answer may be found in the reply given to Bixio, bravest of the brave, who yet feared, at one hotly-contested point, that retreat was inevitable.  ‘Here,’ retorted the chief,’we die.’  Men who really mean to conquer or die can do miracles.