what work it is to find one’s way along a road
on which a whole corps d’amee is marching with
an enormous materiel of war in a pitch dark night.
This, however, is what your special correspondent
was obliged to do. Fortunately enough, I had
scarcely proceeded as far as Ponte di Brenta when I
fell in with an officer of Cialdini’s staff,
who was bound to the same destination, namely, Dolo.
As we proceeded along the road under a continuous
shower of rain, our eyes now and then dazzled by the
bright serpent-like flashes of the lightning, we fell
in with some battalion or squadron, which advanced
carefully, as it was impossible for them as well as
for us to discriminate between the road and the ditches
which flank it, for all the landmarks, so familiar
to our guides in the daytime, were in one dead level
of blackness. So it was that my companion and
myself, after stumbling into ditches and out of them,
after knocking our horses’ heads against an
ammunition car, or a party of soldiers sheltered under
some big tree, found ourselves, after three hours’
ride, in this village of Dolo. By this time
the storm had greatly abated in its violence, and the
thunder was but faintly heard now and then at such
a distance as to enable us distinctly to hear the
roar of the guns. Our horses could scarcely
get through the sticky black mud, into which the white
suffocating dust of the previous days had been turned
by one night’s rain. We, however, made
our way to the parsonage of the village, for we had
already made up our minds to ascend the steeple of
the church to get a view of the surrounding country
and a better hearing of the guns if possible.
After a few words exchanged with the sexton—a
staunch Italian, as he told us he was—we
went up the ladder of the church spire. Once
on the wooden platform, we could hear more distinctly
the boom of the guns, which sounded like the broadsides
of a big vessel. Were they the guns of Persano’s
long inactive fleet attacking some of Brondolo’s
or Chioggia’s advanced forts? Were the
guns those of some Austrian man-of-war which had
engaged an Italian ironclad; or were they the ‘Affondatore,’
which left the Thames only a month ago, pitching into
Trieste? To tell the truth, although we patiently
waited two long hours on Dolo church spire, when both
I and my companion descended we were not in a position
to solve either of these problems. We, however,
thought then, and still think, they were the guns
of the Italian fleet which had attacked an Austrian
fort.
Civita Vecchia, July 22, 1866.
Since the departure from this port of the old hospital
ship ‘Gregeois’ about a year ago, no French
ship of war had been stationed at Civita Vecchia;
but on Wednesday morning the steam-sloop ‘Catinat,’
180 men, cast anchor in the harbour, and the commandant
immediately on disembarking took the train for Rome
and placed himself in communication with the French
ambassador. I am not aware whether the Pontifical
government had applied for this vessel, or whether
the sending it was a spontaneous attention on the
part of the French emperor, but, at any rate, its
arrival has proved a source of pleasure to His Holiness,
as there is no knowing what may happen In troublous
times like the present, and it is always good to have
a retreat insured.