Meanwhile the French troops are encamped at a little distance from Rome.  Some attempts at fair and equal treaty when their desire to occupy Rome was firmly resisted, Oudinot describes in his despatches as a readiness for submission.  Having tried in vain to gain this point, he has sent to France for fresh orders.  These will be decided by the turn the election takes.  Meanwhile the French troops are much exposed to the Roman force where they are.  Should the Austrians come up, what will they do?  Will they shamelessly fraternize with the French, after pretending and proclaiming that they came here as a check upon their aggressions?  Will they oppose them in defence of Rome, with which they are at war?

Ah! the way of falsehood, the way of treachery,—­how dark, how full of pitfalls and traps!  Heaven defend from it all who are not yet engaged therein!

War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I had fancied it.  True, it tries men’s souls, lays bare selfishness in undeniable deformity.  Here it has produced much fruit of noble sentiment, noble act; but still it breeds vice too, drunkenness, mental dissipation, tears asunder the tenderest ties, lavishes the productions of Earth, for which her starving poor stretch out their hands in vain, in the most unprofitable manner.  And the ruin that ensues, how terrible!  Let those who have ever passed happy days in Rome grieve to hear that the beautiful plantations of Villa Borghese—­that chief delight and refreshment of citizens, foreigners, and little children—­are laid low, as far as the obelisk.  The fountain, singing alone amid the fallen groves, cannot be seen and heard without tears; it seems like some innocent infant calling and crowing amid dead bodies on a field which battle has strewn with the bodies of those who once cherished it.  The plantations of Villa Salvage on the Tiber, also, the beautiful trees on the way from St. John Lateran to La Maria Maggiore, the trees of the Forum, are fallen.  Rome is shorn of the locks which lent grace to her venerable brow.  She looks desolate, profaned.  I feel what I never expected to,—­as if I might by and by be willing to leave Rome.

Then I have, for the first time, seen what wounded men suffer.  The night of the 30th of April I passed in the hospital, and saw the terrible agonies of those dying or who needed amputation, felt their mental pains and longing for the loved ones who were away; for many of these were Lombards, who had come from the field of Novarra to fight with a fairer chance,—­many were students of the University, who had enlisted and thrown themselves into the front of the engagement.  The impudent falsehoods of the French general’s despatches are incredible.  The French were never decoyed on in any way.  They were received with every possible mark of hostility.  They were defeated in open field, the Garibaldi legion rushing out to meet them; and though they suffered much from the walls, they sustained themselves nowhere.  They