It was the time when King Victor Emmanuel evinced flattering cordiality towards all the refugees who came to him from every part of Italy, even those whom he knew to be Republicans, compromised and flying the consequences of popular insurrection.

The rough, shrewd House of Savoy had long been dreaming of bringing about Italian unity to the profit of the Piedmontese monarchy, and Orlando well knew under what master he was taking service; but in him the Republican already went behind the patriot, and indeed he had begun to question the possibility of a united Republican Italy, placed under the protectorate of a liberal Pope, as Mazzini had at one time dreamed.

Was that not indeed a chimera beyond realisation which would devour generation after generation if one obstinately continued to pursue it?
For his part, he did not wish to die without having slept in Rome as one of the conquerors.

Even if liberty was to be lost, he desired to see his country united and erect, returning once more to life in the full sunlight.

And so it was with feverish happiness that he enlisted at the outset of the war of 1859; and his heart palpitated with such force as almost to rend his breast, when, after Magenta, he entered Milan with the French army--Milan which he had quitted eight years previously, like an exile, in despair.