The delight, the joy, the enthusiasm which greeted his words are indescribable.  The lad had spoken with so much warmth, had been so carried away by his imagination, that he had not perceived that, gradually, as the story proceeded, he had passed from fact to fiction; and his eyes were wet, his voice shook, with the spell of his hallucination.  His words carried conviction, and not a doubt clouded the happiness of his listeners.  They laughed and cried and kissed each other, feeling themselves suddenly released from all their doubts and scruples, from all the miserable conflicts of conscience that had tortured them as Italians and as Catholics!  The reconciliation between Church and State!  The dream of so many years!  What peace it promised, what a future of love and harmony!  What a sense of freedom and security!

“Thank God, thank God!” the mother cried, sinking into a chair, worn out by her emotions.  And then, in a moment or two, they were all at the lad again, clamoring for fresh details.

“Is it really true?”

“Haven’t you dreamed it?”

“Go on, tell us everything.  Tell us about the Pope, about the crowd, about what happened next"...

“What happened next?” the boy began again, in a tired voice.  “I hardly know.  There was such an uproar, such confusion, such an outburst of frenzy, that the mere recollection of it makes my brain reel.  All I saw was a vortex of arms and flags, and the breath was almost knocked out of me by a thundering blow on the chest.  After a while, I got out of the thick of it, and plunged into one of the streets leading to the bridge of St. Angelo.  People were still pouring into the piazza from Borgo Pio with frantic shouts.  I heard afterwards that the crowd tried to break into the Vatican; the soldiers had to keep them back, first breast to breast, then with blows, and then with their bayonets.  They say that some people were suffocated in the press.  No one knows yet what happened inside the Vatican; there was a rumor that the Pope had given his blessing from the window—­but I didn’t see him.  I was almost dead when I got to the bridge.  The news of what had taken place had already spread over the whole city, and from every direction crowds were still pouring towards the Vatican.  Detachments of cavalry went by me at a trot; orderlies and aides-de-camps carrying orders dashed along the streets.  Hearing their shouts, the people in the windows shouted back at them.  Decrepit old men, sick people, women with babies in their arms, swarmed on the terraces, poured out of the houses, questioning, wondering, embracing one another...  At last I got to the Corso.  At that minute there was a tremendous report from the direction of the Pincio, another from Porta Pia, a third from San Pancrazio:  all the batteries of the Italian army were saluting the Pope.  Soon afterwards the bells of the Capitol began to ring; then, one after another, a hundred churches chimed in.  The crowds of Borgo Pio surged frantically