Their very countesses and princesses had kissed the general's hands in London, it was said.

He could well believe it; for the nation was noble, and the man was a saint.

It was enough to look once at his face to see the divine force of faith in him and his great pity for all that was poor, suffering, and oppressed in this world.
The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to a vast humanitarian idea which inspired the thought and stress of that revolutionary time, had left its mark upon Giorgio in a sort of austere contempt for all personal advantage.

This man, whom the lowest class in Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his kitchen, had all his life despised money.

The leaders of his youth had lived poor, had died poor.