Later, on the train to Denver, Signore Difranco told me about his background. His mother, who was a member of a titled French family, had married an Italian patrician, thus bonding two noble families—one French, the other Italian. However, as with many aristocratic European families of the nineteenth century during the outset of the Industrial Revolution, both houses had little money to go along with their grand pedigrees.

While Signore Difranco was well-educated and had a grasp of several languages, for men such as him with no viable skills, one of the few occupations open was the military. And that was where he spent most of his life, finally ending up fighting with Garibaldi in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of the Franco-Prussian War, Italy was united, and Garibaldi was voted a pension by the Italian g...

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