We were living in a glow of triumph and gratitude; and for me, it seemed to me as if I walked among the angels of a new-created world.

All faces at Florence shone with one thought and one love.

You can scarcely realise to yourself what it was at that time.

Friends were more than friends, and strangers were friends.

The rapture of the Italians--their gratitude to the French, the simple joy with which the French troops understood (down to the privates) that they had come to deliver their brothers, and to go away with empty hands; all these things, which have been calumniated and denied, were wonderfully beautiful.