appens except to ballet heroes, and to Saint Anthony of Padua. The
dancing girls, however, dance in vain, and the orchestra plays to deaf
ears, for all voices are raised at once, and all eyes are turned from the
stage. The King has entered the royal box, and every lady in the long
tiers of boxes unfurls the tricolor-flag she bears in her hands and waves
it bravely. The whole house keeps rising, shouting, cheering. The
musicians lay down their instruments, and the ballet-girls drop their
postures and Caesar forgets his dignity, and one and all crowd forward on
the stage and join in the general cheering; and when the king leaves, the
curtain drops upon the unfinished ballet, and the whole house rush into
the piazza to see Victor Emmanuel again as he drives away.

The last time that my path comes across the kingly progress is at a
railway station. The long street of Parma, leading to the station, is
lined with a dense crowd; and the flowers and flags and triumphal arches
are to be seen in greater profusion here than even I have been accustomed
to before. The royal carriages have to move at a foot's pace, on account
of the multitude which presses round them. Amidst playing of bands and
throwing of flowers, the King, accompanied by his vast escort, has
reached the station, and enters it with his suite, but the eager
enthusiasm of the multitude is not sated yet. Regardless of all railway
rules and penalties, they clamber over palings and run up embankments,
and manage to force their way at last to the platform itself, as the
royal train is moving on. Even the iron nerve of Victor Emmanuel seems
affected by this last greeting of farewell; and while the train remains
in sight I can see the King bowing kindly to the crowd on either side.

Never, I think, in the world's history was the promised land entered with
more of promise.

When, in the old fairy tale, the sleeping princess of the slumber-bound
palace awoke to light and life; when of a sudden the horses began to
neigh, and the clocks to tick, and the spits to turn, the brightness and
suddenness of the change could scarcely have been more complete than that
through which I passed. From chill, cheerless, ceaseless rain into
bright warm sun-light; from a country fever-haunted, barren, and
desolate, into a land swarming with life, rich and fertile as a garden;
from a gloomy priest-ridden people, kept down by force of arms, hating
their rulers and hated by them, into