In the first wild enthusiasm of the Garibaldian revolution, even poor, hill-perched, filth-stricken, pig-breeding Laviano was to be a city, and forthwith, in the general stye, the walls of a great municipal building, from which lofty destinies were to be guided and controlled in the path to greatness, began to rise, with strength of stone masonry, and arches of well-hewn basalt, and divisions within for halls and stairways, and many offices.

But the beams of the first story were never laid across the lower walls.

There was no more money, and what had been built was a palace for the pigs.

Laviano had spent its little all, and gone into debt, to be great, and had failed; and though the people had earned some of their own money back as wages in the building, more than half of it slipped into the pockets of architects, who went away smiling, jeering, and happy, to prey upon the next foolish village that would be great and could not.

And above, from a hill on the mountain's spur outside the village, still frowned intact the heavy four-towered castle, complete and sound as when it had been built, the lasting monument of those hard warriors of a sterner time, who could not only take, but hold--and they held long and cruelly.
Veronica looked up backwards at the towers, as the horses stood a while to breathe after the steep ascent, and she asked Don Teodoro to whom the castle belonged.
"It is yours," he answered.