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Save only those sonorous words which circle the dome of S. Peter's, I have seen no inscription on Christian temple which seemed to me so impressive. "We fetched a compass, and came to Rhegium." Paul was on his voyage from Caesarea to Rome, and here his ship touched, here at the haven beneath Aspromonte.
And Orlando was there when the dictator, abdicating power, signed the decree which annexed the Two Sicilies to the Crown of Italy; even as subsequently he took part in that forlorn attempt on Rome, when the rageful cry was "Rome or Death!" an attempt which came to a tragic issue at Aspromonte, when the little army was dispersed by the Italian troops, and Garibaldi, wounded, was taken prisoner, and sent back to the solitude of his island of Caprera, where he became but a fisherman and a tiller of the rocky soil.*
He had never parted from the chief of his choice the fiery apostle of independence keeping by his side in America and in Italy till after the fatal day of Aspromonte, when the treachery of kings, emperors, and ministers had been revealed to the world in the wounding and imprisonment of his hero a catastrophe that had instilled into him a gloomy doubt of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine justice.
There is a noble view from this point over both seas and into the riven complexities of Aspromonte, when the peak is not veiled in mists, as it frequently is. My visits to the provincial museum have become scandalously frequent during the last few days. I cannot keep away from the place.
However, I managed to pass with some soldiers' wives who were carrying fruit as far as Narni, and there I met an old comrade of Aspromonte, who is a custom-officer now, but true to the good cause, and he, and his daughter, who is with me, helped me through every thing, and so I am with my dear friends again."
It looked as if he would presently wake up and continue his march; but he neither spoke nor stirred. Then they knew he was dead. And they piled all these stones over him, to prevent the wolves, you understand " Aspromonte deserves its name.
It was from our beach yonder that Garibaldi set out for Italy in the campaign of Aspromonte; hither he was brought back, wounded, to the friendly people, still faithful to that love of liberty which flowed in the old Taorminian blood. I shut my books; but to my eyes the rock is scriptured now. What a leaf it is from the world-history of man upon the planet!
It appears more credible that an old man's memory is at fault than that a letter, so colossally insolent, was actually written. Menabrea, and even the King, may have feared that something of the kind was in the mind of the Emperor. As after Aspromonte so after Mentana; Garibaldi was confined in the fortress of Varignano, on the bay of Spezia. A few weeks later he was released and sent to Caprera.
Place had been found on the walls for certain modern pictures of local interest. One represented a pasture on the heights of Aspromonte, shepherds and their cattle amid rich herbage, under a summer sky, with purple summits enclosing them on every side; the other, also a Calabrian mountain scene, but sternly grand in the light of storm; a dark tarn, a rushing torrent, the lonely wilderness.
A curious record remains, in which a German commander testifies to the energy and effect of the last strokes of the wounded lion of Aspromonte. But England went away sorrowful, for she had great possessions. VIII The Wrong Horse
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