He was hated and feared; more than once he was in imminent danger of his life, but he did his duty in his post.

Had his authority fallen, it is impossible to say what evil might have ensued to the city and its inhabitants--evils vastly more to be feared than the entrance of an orderly Italian army through the Porta Pia.

For the recollections of Count Rossi's murder, and of the short and lawless Republic of 1848, were fresh in the minds of the people, and before they had faded there were dangerous rumours of a rising even less truly Republican in theory, and far more fatal in the practical social anarchy which must have resulted from its success.

Giuseppe Mazzini had survived his arch-enemy, the great Cavour, and his influence was incalculable.
But my business is not to write the history of those uncertain days, though no one who considers the social life of Rome, either then or now, can afford to overlook the influence of political events upon the everyday doings of men and women.

We must follow the private carriage containing the two respectable citizens who were on their way to Del Ferice's house..