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Updated: September 10, 2025
We stayed in the same position until night, when we retired to a position near Mentana, where we bivouacked. "My company was one of the two chasseur companies which attacked on the right with the 1st Line Regiment. It forced the volunteers from solidly held positions where they left a gun and a considerable number of rifles.
The 23d again was a gala day, being the anniversary of the death of Enrico Cairoli one of the celebrated brothers; he fell at Mentana; and I had promised Vinnie Ream to go to see the fete with her; but she as usual having twenty callers just when we ought to have started, we arrived too late.
And for the third time Orlando shared in that fine heroic madness destined to be vanquished at Mentana by the Pontifical Zouaves supported by a small French corps. Again wounded, he came back to Turin in almost a dying condition. But, though his spirit quivered, he had to resign himself; the situation seemed to have no outlet; only an upheaval of the nations could give Rome to Italy.
It was true that by using the influence he possessed he might hope to be released from his engagement, but such a course was most repugnant to him. Before Mentana it would have been wholly impossible, for it would have seemed cowardly.
It was already known that the enemy had fallen back upon Mentana, and no one doubted the ultimate result of the day's fighting. People were already beginning to talk of going out to take assistance to the wounded. The idea struck Giovanni as plausible and he determined to act upon it at once. He took a surgeon and several men with him, and drove out across the Campagna to the scene of the battle.
He fell back from his villa to the houses, and thence to the Castle of Mentana. The Zouaves followed in the face of a murderous fire, discharged from the walls of the castle; but they always advanced, and finally, repelled, by a bayonet charge, a renewed and general attack of the enemy.
M. Emile Zola had not written his 'Assommoir. Count Bismarck had only just brought to a successful termination the first part of his trimachy; Sadowa and Sedan were yet unfought. Garibaldi had won Naples, and Cavour had said, "If we did for ourselves what we are doing for Italy, we should be great scoundrels;" but Garibaldi had not yet failed at Mentana, nor had Austria ceded Venice.
Now, when she stumbled on the horrors of the world, she would cry to herself, 'God knows! with a catching breath, and the feeling of a child that runs from darkness to protecting arms; and so escape her pain. Presently she came to sit by Eleanor again, trying to amuse her by the account of a talk on the roadside, with an old spaccapietre, or stone-breaker, who had fought at Mentana.
"I know there are two narratives of your relations with the battle of Mentana," observed the cardinal, quietly.
"I came to find you," said Giovanni in a low voice, "because everything has been set right in your absence, and I was afraid you might be killed at Mentana without receiving my apology." Gouache looked at his companion in some surprise. He knew very well that Sant' Ilario was not a man to make excuses without some very extraordinary reasons for such a step.
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