Tuesday, 2 January 1877

I have carried away from Rome the same pleasant and insipid impression as from Naples, and a sketch of an old woman done tolerably well.

I am in Genoa.

I am calm. People spoke to us of Pietro quite naturally, as though nothing had occurred; no one seemed to take any interest in him or to believe all manner of things. We travelled with a sort of madman.

I have begun a reverie in eight pictures.

Last winter and now again I have passed almost every day through the Piazza Barberini, and on the corner of a building I read an inscription in red letters which struck me particularly yesterday: We want the accession to the constitutional kingdom of Victor Emmanuel.¹

This wish expressed in that harmonious, gentle language produces a charming contrast in which I find something of an involuntary coquetry. I am naïvely delighted to see people asking for a king.

Behind this sentence, in my imagination, rises the monstrous figure of Victor Emmanuel,² stamped with a strange majesty, marching on Rome, having himself proclaimed on the Capitol by a mere 4,000 as King and Liberator³ — and thereby accomplishing the union of the most beautiful country in the world.

It sends a shiver of enthusiasm through one’s veins, and I assure you that the ugly head of the king is worth many a head from antiquity.

This sentence has yet another meaning. It is the wish of Young Italy,⁴ which seems to me borne on invisible wings and which stirs and touches one, one knows not why.