this document in his hand, Peard went out with the National Guard to meet the real Garibaldi who was on his way from Auletta.  The Dictator hailed his double with the cry of ’Viva Garibaldi,’ in which Cosenz and the other officers cordially joined.  The entry of the Liberator into Salerno was greeted with the wildest enthusiasm, the wonderful beauty of the surroundings seeming a fitting setting for a scene like the vision of some freedom-loving poet.

Next morning at half-past nine, Garibaldi, with thirteen of his staff, started by special train for the capital.

It must be remembered that though the army of Salerno was recalled to the Volturno, no troops had been withdrawn from Naples.  The sentries still paced before the palaces and public offices, the barracks held their full complement, Castel Sant’ Elmo had all its guns in position.  These troops quartered in the capital, where everything contributed to stimulate their fidelity, were of different stuff from Ghio’s or Caldarelli’s frightened sheep; a White Terror, a repetition of the 15th of May 1848, would have been much to their mind.  There had been no actual revolution; nothing officially proved that Naples had thrown off the royal allegiance.  Such were the strange circumstances under which Garibaldi, without a single battalion, came to take possession of a city of 300,000 inhabitants.

Courage of this sort either does not exist, or it is supremely unconscious.  It is likely, therefore, that the Dictator gave no thought to the enormous risk he ran, but his passage from the station to the palace of the Foresteria, where he descended, was a bad quarter-of-an-hour to the friends who followed him, and to whom his life seemed the point on which Italian regeneration yet hung.  A chance shot fired by some Royalist fanatic, and who could measure the result?  As he passed under the muzzle of the guns at the opening of the Toledo, he gave the order:  ‘Drive slower, slower—­more slowly still.’  And he rose and stood up for a moment in the carriage with his arms crossed.  The artillerymen, who had begun to make a kind of hostile demonstration, changed their minds and saluted.  The sullen looks of the royal soldiers was the only jarring note in the display of intoxicating joy with which the Neapolitans welcomed the bringer of their freedom; freedom all too easily had, for if anything could have purified the Neapolitans from the evil influences of servitude, it would have been the necessity of paying dearly for their liberties.  The delirium in the streets lasted for several days and nights; what the consequences would have been of such a state of madness under a paler sky, it is not pleasant to reflect; here, at least, there were no robberies, no drunken person was seen; if there were some murders, a careful inquiry made by an Englishman showed that the number was the same as the average number of street-murders through the year.  At night, when the word passed ‘Il Dittatore dorme,’ it was enough to clear the streets as if by magic near the palace (a private one) where in a sixth floor room the idol of the hour slept.  The National Guard, who were the sole guardians of order, behaved admirably.