Half an hour later he stole gently back to the dining-room.  His father and mother sat there alone, sad and silent.  He asked pardon of his father, who grumblingly shook hands; then he returned to his room, followed by his mother.

“Then we shall hear no more of these ideas?” she tenderly suggested, laying her hands on his shoulders.

He answered her with a kiss.

The next day he crossed the borders of the Papal States.

The discovery of his flight was received with tears, rage, and invectives.  They would never consent to see him again; if he came back, they would not even rise from their seats to welcome him; they would not speak to him for a month; they would cut off his allowance; they had a hundred other plans for his discomfiture.  With the mother it was only talk; but the father meant what he said.  He was a good but hard man, averse to compromises, and violent in his anger; his son knew it and feared him.  It was incomprehensible that the lad should have ventured upon such a step.

The news of the 20th of September only increased the resentment of his parents.

“He will see,” they muttered.  “Only let him try to come back!”

Their words, their gestures, the manner in which they were to receive him, were all thought out and agreed upon:  he was to receive a memorable lesson.

On the morning of the 22d they were all seated in the dining-room, reading, when there was a great knock at the door, and the boy, flushed, panting, sunburnt, stood erect and motionless on the threshold.

No one moved.

“What!” cried the boy, extending his arms in amazement, “you haven’t heard the news?”

No one answered.

“Hasn’t any one told you?  Has no one been out from Florence?  Are you all in the dark still?”

No one breathed.

“We have heard,” one of the girls at length faltered, after exchanging glances with her father, “that Rome was taken—­”

“What!  Is that all?”

“That is all.”

“But what a victory!  What a victory!” cried the son, with a shout that set them trembling.  “So I am the one to tell you of it!”

They sprang up and surrounded him.

“But how is it possible?” he went on, with excited gestures—­“how is it possible that you haven’t heard anything?  Have there been no rumors about the neighborhood?  Haven’t the peasants held a meeting?  What is the municipality about?  Why, it’s inconceivable!  Just listen—­here, come close to me, so—­I’ll tell you the whole story; my heart’s going at such a rate that I can hardly speak...”

“But what has happened?”

“Wait!  You shan’t know yet.  You must hear the whole story first, from beginning to end.  I want to tell you the thing bit by bit, just as I saw it.”

“But what is it?—­the Roman festival?”

“The plebiscite?”

“The King’s arrival?”