Yes, yes, Italy is made, but let us make an Italian nation.
And give us more and more books, and let us ever go more and more forward into science and into light, if we wish to live and to be healthy, good, and strong!" With his torso erect, with his powerful leonine muzzle flaming with the white brightness of his beard and hair, old Orlando looked superb.

And in that simple, candid chamber, so touching with its intentional poverty, he raised his cry of hope with such intensity of feverish faith, that before the young priest's eyes there arose another figure--that of Cardinal Boccanera, erect and black save for his snow-white hair, and likewise glowing with heroic beauty in his crumbling palace whose gilded ceilings threatened to fall about his head! Ah! the magnificent stubborn men of the past, the believers, the old men who still show themselves more virile, more ardent than the young! Those two represented the opposite poles of belief; they had not an idea, an affection in common, and in that ancient city of Rome, where all was being blown away in dust, they alone seemed to protest, indestructible, face to face like two parted brothers, standing motionless on either horizon.

And to have seen them thus, one after the other, so great and grand, so lonely, so detached from ordinary life, was to fill one's day with a dream of eternity.
Luigi, however, had taken hold of the old man's hands to calm him by an affectionate filial clasp.

"Yes, yes, you are right, father, always right, and I'm a fool to contradict you.

Now, pray don't move about like that, for you are uncovering yourself, and your legs will get cold again." So saying, he knelt down and very carefully arranged the wrapper; and then remaining on the floor like a child, albeit he was two and forty, he raised his moist eyes, full of mute, entreating worship towards the old man who, calmed and deeply moved, caressed his hair with a trembling touch.
Pierre had been there for nearly two hours, when he at last took leave, greatly struck and affected by all that he had seen and heard.