This fresh worry was all the more trying since my stay in Genoa was disturbed by a multitude of other anxieties.
Not content with distributing copies of the judgment given at Faenza, I had an article inserted in a newspaper[8] containing a summary of my case, in which I asked for fresh information concerning my father and mother, whom I designated only by the initial J.
No one could believe that they were simply nobles; everybody was whispering august names; but as the Orleans family was allied with all the reigning families of Italy, fear seized upon all hearts and closed all lips.
Only one man made his appearance: a former magistrate who had known old Chiappini well.
As a matter of fact, his evidence would have been much more useful to me before the verdict given in my favour, but at least it will serve to confirm it. Let us listen to it.
“I, the undersigned, certify and declare what follows, on my soul and conscience—
“In the year 1808, having sent in my resignation of the post of substitute of the Attorney-General in the Criminal Court of the department called that of the Apennines, I retired to Florence, where I lived until the month of April 1813, the date of my departure for Rome. At the beginning of my residence in the first of these two towns, I made the acquaintance of Lorenzo Chiappini, with whom I sometimes dined at the house of the doctor, Pietro Salvi. In 1810, I met him, with other Florentines, in the immense house of the old Chartreuse, where, like me, he had hired rooms to spend the summer in. The more we saw of each other the more intimate and familiar became our intercourse, especially on his side.
“Very soon he told me the most minute details of a journey he had made to London to see one of his daughters, married, he said, to a rich English lord who had fallen in love with her on hearing her sing in a theatre.
“He could not say enough about the splendour of his son-in-law’s house, nor of the welcome he had received there; told me some coarse stories about Great Britain; described the manners of the inhabitants; constantly repeated that all his happiness lay in that darling daughter, and assured me that he would give the world to procure the pleasure of seeing her again.