But Grandfather Giuseppe had been not only an Italian patriot. He had been fellow citizen and brother-in-arms to any people struggling for its liberties. Thus after the shipwreck of a certain plot hatched in Turin for the overthrow of the military and civil government, a plot in which he had been deeply involved, he had escaped by a hair’s breadth the clutches of Metternich’s hirelings, and spent the time of his exile fighting and bleeding, first in Spain for the cause of constitutionalism, then in Greece for the independence of the Hellenic peoples. It was in Greece that Settembrini’s father had seen the light⁠—which probably accounted for his being a humanist and lover of classical antiquity. His mother had been of German stock; Settembrini had married her in Switzerland and taken her about with him in his further adventurous career. He had been allowed, after ten years of exile, to return to Milan, where he had practised his profession, without for a moment ceasing to labour, with voice and pen, in verse and prose, for the establishment of a united republic, and to draw up subversive programmes characterized by dictatorial ardour, in which were promulgated in the clearest style the unification of the liberated people and the attainment of general felicity.