You know not, Monsignore, what it is to have an idea become incarnate in a regiment.

There is a whole world of recollections, traditions, and virtues, circulating, seen and unseen, through this band of men.

It is the moral patrimony of the corps; the veterans don't carry it away when they retire from the service, while the conscripts inherit it from the day of their joining the regiment.

The colonel, the officers, and the privates, change one after the other, and yet it is the same regiment that ever remains, because the same spirit continues to flutter amid the folds of the same colours.

Have four good regiments of picked men, well paid, properly respected, and that have been under fire, and they will last as long as Rome, and Mazzini himself will not prevail against their courage." "So be it! And may Heaven hear you!" "The business is half done, Monsignore, when you have heard me.