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 the presence of a free people
rejoicing in their freedom: such has been my change as I passed from the
States of the Church into those of Victor Emmanuel.
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