The Captain of Verona, knowing the sort of prisoner he had to deal with, and being made responsible for him, sent for an engineer and asked his opinion as to the possibilities of escape for a prisoner who was not locked up in a cell. The engineer wrote out a careful criticism of the fortress, concluding with an extremely practical remark: ‘With good means of escape,’ he observed, ‘a man may escape from any place, but without means it is not possible to escape at all.’
The Captain, only partially reassured, set to work to convert his prisoner, and sent him a good priest to teach him his Catechism and exhort him to the practices of Christianity; but the young Count would have neither exhortation nor religious instruction. The Council of Ten now sent him to the fortress of Palma for a change of air, and the commander of that place inherited the feverish anxiety about his charge which had tormented the Captain of Verona. He did not consult an engineer, however, and one morning the prisoner was not in his room, nor in the fortress, nor anywhere in the neighbourhood of Palma.
The Inquisitors now sent Sbirri in all directions throughout the Venetian territory. They could not catch Alemanno, but he wearied of eluding them, and judged that he could get better terms by submitting to the Inquisitors. He did so, using the offices of his aunt, Countess Giulia Gambara, who was married to a gentleman of Vicenza. The Podestà of the latter city sent an officer and six soldiers to the place designated by Alemanno, and he surrendered, and was taken first to Padua, and then to Venice. As soon as he landed at the Piazzetta he was put in charge of Cristofoli and the Sbirri, who took him before the Inquisitors.
They exiled him to Zara, and wrote to the Governor of Dalmatia: ‘We desire him to have a good lodging.... See that he frequents persons of good habits, thanks to whom he may not wander from the right path on which he has entered, and in which we wish him to continue.’
The Inquisitors, good souls, so mildly concerned for the wild boy’s moral welfare, were soon to learn what Alemanno considered the ‘right path,’ for the Governor of Dalmatia kept them well informed. Before long they learned that a certain fisherman, who had refused to let the Count’s butler, Antonio Barach, have a fine fish which was already sold to another client, had been seized, taken into the Count’s house, and severely beaten.
But the Inquisitors were inclined to be clement and paid no attention to the accounts of his doings. In 1756 he was authorised to return to his domains of
VIA GARIBALDI
Pralboino and Corvione, and his real career began. His first care was to engage as many desperate Bravi as he could find. One of these having had a little difficulty with the police, and having been killed during the argument, Alemanno captured a Sbirro, and so handled him that he sent him back to his post a cripple for life.
Scarcely a year after his return from Zara, he rode through the town of Calvisano, and without answering the Customs officer, whose duty it was to ascertain if he were carrying anything dutiable, he galloped on and escaped recognition. His servant, who followed him at a little distance, was stopped, and as he answered the Customs men very rudely he was locked up in jail. But when the officer in charge learned who the man was, his fright was such that he not only set him at liberty at once, but conversed with him and treated him in the most friendly manner.