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So there we were talking around and about it.

The English lady said she had to go to Vienna for a while.

It was a pity because she had planned to lay a wreath at the foot of the Garibaldi statue, towering over Rome in spectacular benediction from the highpoint of the Gianicolo.

Around that statue in the green park where children play and lovers walk in twos and there is a glowing view of the whole city, in that park are the rows of marble busts of Garibaldi's fallen men, the ones who one day rushed out of the Porta San Pancrazio and, under fire all the way, up the long, straight narrow lane to take, then lose the high ground of the Villa Doria Pamphili.

When they lost it, the French artillery moved in, and that was the end for Garibaldi that time, on 30 April 1849.

Once out of the gate they had charged straight up the narrow lane.

We had walked it many times and shivered, figuring what a fish barrel it had been for the French.

Now the park is filled with marble busts and all the streets in the immediate area have the full and proper names of the men who fell.