January, 17th.
To-day, at two o'clock, as soon as we entered the schoolroom, the master
called up Derossi, who went and took his place in front of the little
table facing us, and began to recite, in his vibrating tones, gradually
raising his limpid voice, and growing flushed in the face:--
"Four years ago, on this day, at this hour, there arrived in front of
the Pantheon at Rome, the funeral car which bore the body of Vittorio
Emanuele II., the first king of Italy, dead after a reign of twenty-nine
years, 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 crippled
veterans, by a forest of banners, by the envoys of three hundred towns,
by everything which represents the power and the 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 king
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 looks, 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. The coffin, borne by the cuirassiers, passed, and then the
banners bent forward all together in salute,--the banners of the new
regiments, the old, tattered banners of Goito, of Pastrengo, of Santa
Lucia, of Novara, of the Crimea, of Palestro, of San Martino, of
Castelfidardo; eighty black veils fell, a hundred medals clashed against
the staves, and that sonorous and confused uproar, which stirred the
blood of all, was like the sound of a thousand human voices saying all
together, 'Farewell, good king, gallant king, loyal king! Thou wilt live
in the heart of thy people as long as the sun shall shine over Italy.'
"After this, the banners rose heavenward once more, and King Vittorio
entered into the immortal glory of the tomb."