in a way which never happens except to ballet heroes, and to Saint Anthony of Padua.  The dancing girls, however, dance in vain, and the orchestra plays to deaf ears, for all voices are raised at once, and all eyes are turned from the stage.  The King has entered the royal box, and every lady in the long tiers of boxes unfurls the tricolor-flag she bears in her hands and waves it bravely.  The whole house keeps rising, shouting, cheering.  The musicians lay down their instruments, and the ballet-girls drop their postures and Caesar forgets his dignity, and one and all crowd forward on the stage and join in the general cheering; and when the king leaves, the curtain drops upon the unfinished ballet, and the whole house rush into the piazza to see Victor Emmanuel again as he drives away.

The last time that my path comes across the kingly progress is at a railway station.  The long street of Parma, leading to the station, is lined with a dense crowd; and the flowers and flags and triumphal arches are to be seen in greater profusion here than even I have been accustomed to before.  The royal carriages have to move at a foot’s pace, on account of the multitude which presses round them.  Amidst playing of bands and throwing of flowers, the King, accompanied by his vast escort, has reached the station, and enters it with his suite, but the eager enthusiasm of the multitude is not sated yet.  Regardless of all railway rules and penalties, they clamber over palings and run up embankments, and manage to force their way at last to the platform itself, as the royal train is moving on.  Even the iron nerve of Victor Emmanuel seems affected by this last greeting of farewell; and while the train remains in sight I can see the King bowing kindly to the crowd on either side.

Never, I think, in the world’s history was the promised land entered with more of promise.

When, in the old fairy tale, the sleeping princess of the slumber-bound palace awoke to light and life; when of a sudden the horses began to neigh, and the clocks to tick, and the spits to turn, the brightness and suddenness of the change could scarcely have been more complete than that through which I passed.  From chill, cheerless, ceaseless rain into bright warm sun-light; from a country fever-haunted, barren, and desolate, into a land swarming with life, rich and fertile as a garden; from a gloomy priest-ridden people, kept down by force of arms, hating their rulers and hated by them, into the presence of a free people rejoicing in their freedom:  such has been my change as I passed from the States of the Church into those of Victor Emmanuel.