visibly anxious to address us, and began not uncivilly, but still
in order that we should hear, to speculate on our nationality among
themselves. It appeared that we were Germans; for one of these
officers, who had formerly been in the Austrian service at Vienna,
recognized the word _bitter_ in our remarks on the _beccafichi_. As I
did not care to put these fine fellows to the trouble of hating us for
others' faults, I made bold to say that we were not Germans, and to
add that _bitter_ was also an English word. Ah! yes, to be sure, one
of them admitted; when he was with the Sardinian army in the Crimea,
he had frequently heard the word used by the English soldiers. He
nodded confirmation of what he said to his comrades, and then was good
enough to display what English he knew. It was barely sufficient to
impress his comrades; but it led the way to a good deal of talk in
Italian.

"I suppose you gentlemen are all Piedmontese?" I said.

"Not at all," said our Crimean. "I am from Como; this gentleman, il
signor Conte, (il signor Conte bowed,) is of Piacenza; and our friend
across the table is Genoese. The army is doing a great deal to unify
Italy. We are all Italians now, and you see we speak Italian, and not
our dialects, together."

My cheap remark that it was a fine thing to see them all united under
one flag, after so many ages of mutual hate and bloodshed, turned the
talk upon the origin of the Italian flag; and that led our Crimean to
ask what was the origin of the English colors.

"I scarcely know," I said. "We are Americans."