But there was hardly any room in Florence at that time where
her words would not have been understood as well as I understood them.
I jumped out of bed, got into a dressing-gown, and ran out to where
the "General" was on the lawn before the door, just as I was, and
hardly more than half awake. There he was, all alone. But if there had
been a dozen other men around him, I should have had no difficulty in
recognising him. There was the figure as well known to every Italian
from Turin to Syracuse as that of his own father--the light grey
trousers, the little foraging cap, the red shirt, the bandana
handkerchief loosely thrown over his shoulders and round his neck.
Prints, photographs, portraits of all kinds, have made the English
public scarcely less familiar than the Italian, with the physiognomy
of Giuseppe Garibaldi. But no photograph, of course, and no painting
which I have ever seen, gives certain peculiarities of that striking
head and face, as I first saw it, somewhere about twenty years ago.
The pose of the head, and the general arrangement and colour of the
tawny hair (at that time but slightly grizzled) justified the epithet
"leonine" so often applied to him. His beard and moustache were of the
same hue, and his skin was probably fair by nature, but it had been
tanned by wind and weather. The clear blue eyes were surrounded by a
network of fine lines. This had no trace or suggestion of _cunning_,
as is often the case with wrinkles round the setting of the eyes, but
was obviously the result of habitual contraction of the muscles in
gazing at very distant objects.
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