Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/114

 during which the great Italian fatherland, broken up into seven states, and oppressed by strangers and by tyrants, had been brought back to life in one single state, free and independent; after a reign of twenty-nine years, which he had made illustrious and beneficent with his valor, with loyalty, with boldness amid perils, with wisdom amid triumphs, with constancy amid misfortunes. The funeral-car arrived, laden with wreaths, after having traversed Rome under a rain of flowers, amid the silence of an immense and sorrowing multitude, which had assembled from every part of Italy. Preceded by a legion of generals and by a throng of ministers and princes, followed by a retinue of corporal veterans, by a forest of banners, by the envoys of three hundred towns, by everything which represents the power and glory of a people, it arrived before the august temple where the tomb awaited it.

“At that moment twelve cuirassiers removed the coffin from the car. At that moment Italy bade her last farewell to her dead king, to her old monarch whom she had loved so dearly, the last farewell to her soldier, to her father, to the twenty-nine most fortunate and most blessed years in her history. It was a grand and solemn moment. The eyes, the souls, of all were quivering at the sight of that coffin and the darkened banners of the eighty regiments of the army of Italy, borne by eighty officers, drawn up in line on its passage: for Italy was there in those eighty tokens, which recalled the thousands of dead, the torrents of blood, our most sacred glories, our most holy sacrifices, our most tremendous griefs.