Idle fancies!  I know well enough what we shall be like when that time comes.  I see a sitting-room with a fireplace in the corner, or rather many sitting-rooms with many fireplaces, and many old men seated, chin in hand, in arm-chairs near the hearth.  Near by stands a table with a lamp on it, surrounded by a circle of children, or of nephews and nieces, who nudge each other and point to their father or uncle, whispering, “Hush—­he’s asleep;”—­and laughing at the grotesque expression that sleep has given to our wrinkled faces.

And then perhaps we shall wake, and the children will surround us, begging, as usual, for stories of “a long time ago,” and asking with eager curiosity, “Uncle, did you ever see General Garibaldi?”—­“Father, were you ever close to King Victor Emmanuel?”—­“Grandpapa, did you ever hear Count Cavour speak?”

“Why, yes, child, many and many a time!”

“Oh, do tell us, what were they like?  Did they look like their portraits?  How did they talk?”

And we shall tell them everything, and gradually, as we talk, our voices will regain their old vigor, our cheeks will glow, and we shall watch with delight the brightening of those eager eyes, the proud uplifting of those innocent brows, and the impatient movement of the little hands, signing to us, at each pause, to go on with the story.

And what will have befallen the world by that time?  Will a Victor Emmanuel III. rule over Italy?  Will the Bersaglieri be at Trent?  Will one of our old friends, attached to the Ministry of the Interior, have been made Governor of Tunis?  Will France have passed through another series of empires, republics, communes, and monarchies?  Will the threatened invasion of northern barbarians have taken place?  Will England also have received her coup-de-grace?  Shall we have experimented with a Commune?  Will our great poet have been born?  The Church have been reformed?  Rome rebuilt?  Will there be any armies in those days?  And we—­ what standing shall we have in our village or town?  What shall we have done?  How shall we have lived?

Ah, whatever has happened, whatever fate awaits us, if we have worked, and loved, and believed—­then, when we sit at sunset in the big arm-chair on the terrace, and think of our families, of our friends, of the mountains, of the carnivals, of the Tyrrhenian islands that we dreamed of in our college days, we shall be sad, indeed, at the thought of parting before long from such dear souls and from so beautiful a country; but our faces will brighten with a smile serene and quiet as the dawn of a new youth, and tempering the bitterness of farewell with the tacit pledge of reunion.