But their trumpeting was drowned by a broken and hollow rumble, which announced the field artillery; and then the latter passed in triumph, seated on their lofty caissons, drawn by three hundred pairs of fiery horses, those fine soldiers with yellow lacings, and their long cannons of brass and steel gleaming on the light carriages, as they jolted and resounded, and made the earth tremble.

And then came the mountain artillery, slowly, gravely, beautiful in its laborious and rude semblance, with its large soldiers, with its powerful mules that mountain artillery which carries dismay and death wherever man can set his foot. And last of all, the fine regiment of the Genoese cavalry, which had wheeled down like a whirlwind on ten fields of battle, from Santa Lucia to Villafranca, passed at a gallop, with their helmets glittering in the sun, their lances erect, their pennons floating in the air, sparkling with gold and silver, filling the air with jingling and neighing.

"How beautiful it is!" I exclaimed. My father almost reproved me for these words, and said to me: "You are not to regard the army as a fine spectacle. All these young men, so full of strength and hope, may be called upon any day to defend our country, and fall in a few hours, crushed to fragments by bullets and grape-shot. Every time that you hear the cry, at a feast, 'Hurrah for the army! hurrah for Italy!' picture to yourself, behind the regiments which are passing, a plain covered with corpses, and inundated with blood, and then the greeting to the army will proceed from the very depths of your heart, and the image of Italy will appear to you more severe and grand."