that greeted him in the hundred cities of
Italy, the welcome of the Bride of the Adriatic was, if not the most
imposing, certainly the fairest to see. More touching, however, than
the glorious beauty of the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal in
their rich adornment, was the universal decoration of the poorest
quarters, which were all flagged and festooned so thickly that little
could be seen of the stones of Venice. One poor cobbler, however,
living at the end of a blind alley, had no flag, no garland to deck
his abode: he had therefore pasted three strips of coloured paper,
red, white and green, over his door, inscribing on the middle strip
these words, which in their sublime simplicity merit to be rescued
from oblivion: 'O mia cara Italia, voglio ma non posso fare piu per
te.'

The Iron Crown of the Lombard Kings of Italy, which the Austrians had
taken away in 1859, was brought back and restored to the Cathedral of
Monza. Less presumptuous than Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel never placed
the mystical fillet upon his head, but it was carried after his coffin
to the Pantheon.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST CRUSADE

1867

The French leave Rome--Garibaldi's Arrest and Escape--The Second
French Intervention--Monte Rotondo--Mentana.

The words of Victor Emmanuel to the Venetian Deputation contained a
riddle easy to solve: what was meant by the 'completion' of Italy was
the establishment of her capital on the Tiber. In most minds there was
an intense belief in the inevitability of the union of Rome with the
rest of Italy, but no one saw how it was to be brought about. What
soothsayer foretold Sedan?

In the first period after the war, domestic difficulties fixed the
attention of the Italian Government on the present rather than on the
future. An insurrection at Palermo assumed threatening proportions
owing to the smallness of the garrison, and might have had still more
serious consequences but for the courage and presence of mind shown by
the Syndic, the young Marquis di Rudini. Crime and poverty, republican
hankerings, the irritation of the priesthood at recent legislation,
and most of all, the feeling that little had been done since 1860 to
realise the millennium then promised, contributed to the outbreak
which was quelled when troops arrived from the mainland, but the
ministers were blamed for not having taken better precautions against
its occurrence. Another stumbling-block lay in the path of Ricasoli,
namel