The gentle reader must himself imagine the joy in the castle caused by the arrival of friends who could contribute so powerfully to the safety of the proscribed--what interrogations! what embracings! what inquiries after parents, relatives, and friends! what new and happy hopes! what soft illusions, dreams of peace and rest!
"Oh, my own, my own!" whispered Clelia, when Attilio for the first time imprinted a kiss upon her beautiful brow, "thou art mine and I am thine, in spite of the wicked priests, in spite of the world."
The smell of the gunpowder had perhaps turned her dear little head, so that we may pass over the slight indiscretion of such confessions. She should have been more coquettish, but she was a Roman girl, and her love was true. And is not true love sublime, heroic, such as these two happy beings bore to one another? Is it not the life of the soul, the incentive of all that is noble, the civilizer of the human race?
The Liberals had a glorious acquisition in the person of Prince T------; he was entirely converted by the scenes he had witnessed and the words which he heard; for, generous and brave by nature, he felt the humiliation of his country, and desired to see her liberated from the bad government of the priest and the foreigner. Educated away from Rome, however, and moving in a different sphere from those patriots who held in their hands the plot of the Revolution, he had remained in ignorance of much that was passing, and had even accepted, at his father's desire, a post in the Pontifical army, which removed him farther than ever from the influence of our brave friends. But a film had now passed from his sight, and he saw at last with clearer vision the greatness of Italy's future, and how surely Italy--now divided into so many parts, despised and scorned by the world--should yet be re-united, and become one grand and noble nation, looked up to and respected as in the days of her past glory, as the patriotic Italians of all periods have ever dreamed and prayed she should be.
The Prince was enchanted with his new quarters and with his new companions, and vowed to himself to live and die for the sacred cause of his country.
Rich, powerful, and generous, he became in future the strongest supporter of the proscribed, and they had reason to congratulate themselves for having put faith and hope in so noble a patriot, and one whom they had thus doubly conquered.