The Roman Question

by Edmond About

"Of late years this province has been afflicted by innumerable crimes of all sorts: robbery, pillage, attacks upon houses, have occurred at all hours, and in all places. The numbers of the malefactors have been constantly increasing, as has their audacity, encouraged by impunity."

Nothing is changed since the tribunal of Bologna spoke so forcibly. Stories, as improbable as they are true, are daily related in the country. The illustrious Passatore, who seized the entire population of Forlimpopoli in the theatre, has left successors. The audacious brigands who robbed a diligence in the very streets of Bologna, a few paces from the Austrian barracks, have not yet wholly disappeared. In the course of a tour of some weeks on the shores of the Adriatic, I heard more than one disquieting report. Near Rimini the house of a landed proprietor was besieged by a little army. In one place, all the inmates of the goal walked off, arm-in-arm with the turnkeys; in another a diligence came to grief just outside the walls of a city. If any particular district was allowed to live in peace, it was because the inhabitants subscribed and paid a ransom to the brigands. Five times a week I used to meet the pontifical courier, escorted by an omnibus full of gendarmes, a sight which made me shrewdly suspect the country was not quite safe.

But if the Government is too weak or too careless to undertake an expedition against brigandage, and to purge the country thoroughly, it sometimes avenges its insulted authority and its stolen money. When by chance the Judges of Instruction are sent into the field, they do not trifle with their work. Not only do they press the prisoners to confess their crimes, but they press them in a thumbscrew! The tribunal of Bologna confessed this fact, with compunction, in 1856, alluding to the measures employed as violenti e feroci.

But simple theft, innocent theft, the petty larceny of snuff-boxes and pocket-handkerchiefs, the theft which seeks a modest alms in a neighbour's pocket, is tolerated as paternally as mendicity. Official statistics give the number of the beggars in Rome, I believe, somewhat under the mark; it is a pity they fail to give the number of pickpockets, who swarm through the city; this might easily have been done, as their names are all known to the authorities. No attempt is made to interfere with their operations: the foreign visitors are rich enough to pay this small tax in favour of the national industry; besides, it is not likely the pickpockets will ever make an attempt upon the Pope's pocket-handkerchief.

A Frenchman once caught hold of an elegantly dressed gentleman in the act of snatching away his watch; he took him to the nearest post, and placed him in the charge of the sergeant. "I believe your statement," said the official,

"for I know the man well, and so would you, if you were not very new to the country. He is a Lombard; but if we were to arrest all his fellows, our prisons would never be half large enough. Be off, my fine fellow, and take better care for the future!"

Another foreigner was robbed in the Corso at midnight, on his return from the theatre. All the consolation he got from the magistrate to whom he complained was, "Sir, you were out at an hour when all honest people should be in bed."

A traveller was stopped between Rome and Civita Vecchia, and robbed of all the money he had about him. When he reached Palo, he laid his complaint before the political functionary who taxes travellers for the trouble of fumbling with their passports. The observation of this worthy man was, "What can you expect? the people are so very poor!"

On the eve of the grand fêtes, however, all the riffraff are bound to go to prison, lest the religious ceremonies should be disturbed by evil-doers. They go of their own accord, as an amicable concession to a paternal government: and if any professional thief were by chance to absent himself, he would be politely sent for about midnight. But in spite even of these vigilant measures, it is seldom that a Holy Week goes by without a watch or two going astray; and to any complaint the police would be sure to reply:

"You must not blame us; we have taken every necessary precaution against such accidents. We have got all the thieves who are inscribed on our books under lock and key. For any new comers we are not responsible."