Simple and reserved in his manner to a correspondent, he was entirely frank and courteous in communicating what could be communicated, and quietly silent beyond.

Always the butt of the most savage hostility of the Italian radicals, he resigned the year after, though supported by the majority in the Chamber, rather than expose himself longer to the vulgar and brutal partisan insolence of Cavallotti and his allies in the Chamber.

As individual, as soldier, and as minister, Robilant was the type of the Italian at his best.

Very few of the extreme Left in the Italian Chamber made any pretensions to a comprehension of the nature of a gentleman, and the vulgarity of the outbreak which provoked his resignation--it was on the occasion of the disaster of Dogali--was of a nature which only a hardened politician could adapt himself to.

It was my first experience of the indecencies of Italian parliamentarism, and, when he left the Chamber under the unendurable insults poured on him in language adapted only to street broils, I said to a colleague that he would never appear again in the Chamber.