the rapid beating of each heart.
The principal protagonist was conceived four years after Garibaldi’s death.
Garibaldi was hero.
Garibaldi defeated his country’s enemies. He inspired the nation to become itself: to anticipate its own identity.
Garibaldi was what every Italian wished to be. It is in this sense that one can call him the national genius. There was not an Italianin Italy—not even among the loyal Bourbon troops of the Kingdom of Naples—who did not wish to be Garibaldi. A few hoped to become him by fighting him: some, like La Farina in Sicily, by betraying him. Cavour in Turin became him by using him. What stood between a man and his becoming Garibaldi was not his own identity but the wretched state of Italy: a wretchedness which each interpreted or suffered according to his own theories or position. For the peasant it was the impossibility of leaving his land: for the constitutionalist it was the inefficiency of conspiracy.
When men set eyes upon Garibaldi they amazed themselves: until that moment they had not known who they were. They met him as from within themselves.
He was poorly equipped and almost in rags; he had nothing but a sword and a pistol. ‘What induced you,’ I said, ‘to give up ease and luxury for this life of a dog, in a camp without commissariat, pay, or rations?’ ‘You may well ask,’ he said, ‘I tell you a fortnight ago I was in despair myself, and thought of giving up the whole thing. I was sitting on a hillock, as might be here. Garibaldi came by. He stopped, I don’t know why. I had never spoken to him. I am sure he did not know me, but he stopped. Perhaps I looked very dejected, and indeed I was. Well, he laid his hand on my shoulder and simply said, with that low, strange, smothered voice that seemed almost like a spirit speaking inside me, “Courage; courage! We are going to fight for our country.” Do you think I could ever turn back after that? The next day we fought the battle of the Volturno.’
On 7 September 1860 Garibaldi entered Naples.
Venù è Galubardo!
Venù è lu piu bel!
The Bourbon garrison of several thousand occupied the four castles which dominated the city. The king had fled. The castle cannons were trained upon the city. There was a rumour that Garibaldi would arrive—not with his troops and redshirts on horseback—but alone and by train. The streets were empty under the white glare of the sunlight and the muzzles of the cannons. Nobody knew whether to believe the rumour. Timidly everybody hid indoors. At 1.30 in the afternoon Garibaldi arrived at the station. Half a million peoplesurged into the streets, on to the quays, climbing, pushing, running, shouting—regardless of the cannons and the consequences—to welcome him, to commemorate the moment at which they were living.
Garibaldi was not a military genius of the first order. Politically he was easily deceived. Yet he inspired a whole people. He inspired them, neither by authority nor by divine right, but by representing the simple and pure aspirations of their youth, and by persuading them, through his own example, that these aspirations could be realized in the national struggle for unity and independence. What the nation found sacred in him was its own innocence.
All his characteristics fitted him for such a role. His physical strength and courage. His virility. His long hair down to his shoulders, carefully combed after battle. The simplicity of his tastes and appetites. ‘When a patriot,’ he said, ‘has eaten his bowl of soup and when the affairs of the country are going well, what more can anyone want?’ The island to which he retired whenever there was no task for him to perform and on which he lived as a farmer with his sheep. His patriotism which confounded his theoretical principles. (A republican, he recognized the authority of Victor Emmanuel.) His amour propre. His sense of humour. The fact that he was eloquent by gesture rather than word. ‘I believe if he