lady. The question was received
with a laugh, and the reply, volunteered eagerly by several voices at
once, that she had survived till the previous year, and had died at the
age of ninety-five. I could see that her character was pretty well
understood. With no less eagerness these gossips also informed me that
she had lived to see the house freed from the mortgage, one vineyard
bought back, and the whole property cleared of encumbrance. All this
was the result of the gratitude felt towards the martyred patriot whose
praises were now on every tongue, since he had become the great glory
of his native town; for his life and his brother's constituted
practically its only sacrifice to the cause of Italian liberation.

And the old woman had lived long enough to see all this!

I inquired after the wives of the two heroes. I was told that the
younger had succumbed to her troubles--in particular to the crowning
stroke of misfortune which had deprived her of her only child, a
daughter. But the elder, the mother of the two young Mansanas, was
still living. When the townsfolk spoke of her, their faces became
graver, their voices more solemn; the story was told by one of the
bystanders with occasional interpolations by the others, all however
with a kind of seriousness which testified to the influence this noble,
high-souled woman had obtained over them. I heard that she had found
means to communicate with her husband while still in prison. She had
been able to inform him that the Garibaldians had arranged for a rising
in the town and an attack upon it from without, and that they were
waiting for Mansana to escape in order that he might carry forward the
movement in Rome itself. Escape he did, thanks to his own strength of
will, and his wife's acuteness and devotion. By her advice he feigned
insanity; he screamed till his voice gave way, and indeed, till his
strength was exhausted, for he had refused to touch food or drink. At
the imminent risk of death he persevered in this pretence, till they
sent him to an asylum for lunatics. Here his wife was able to visit
him, and to arrange his flight. But when he had escaped from captivity,
he would not leave the town; the important preparations on foot
required his presence. His wife first nursed him back to health and
then took part in his hazardous enterprise. What other man in his
place, after this long imprisonment, would have resisted the temptation
to secure his freedom by crossing t