Oletta was now still as the grave.
One day a young man named Giulio Saliceti left his village to go into the Campagna, without the permission of the French guard. On his return he was seized and thrown into prison; after a short time, however, he was set at liberty.
The youth left his prison and took his way homewards, full of resentment at the insult put upon him by the enemy. He was noticed to mutter something to himself, probably curses directed against the hated French. A sergeant heard him, and gave him a blow in the face. This occurred in front of the youth's house, at a window of which one of his relatives happened to be standing—the Abbot Saliceti namely, whom the people called Peverino, or Spanish Pepper, from his hot and headlong temper. When Peverino saw the stroke fall upon his kinsman's face, his blood boiled in his veins.
Giulio rushed into the house quite out of himself with shame and anger, and was immediately taken by Peverino into his chamber. After some time the two men were seen to come out, calm, but ominously serious.
At night, other men secretly entered the house of the Saliceti, sat together and deliberated. And what they deliberated on was this: they proposed to blow up the church of Oletta, which the French had turned into their barracks. They were determined to have revenge and their liberty.
They dug a mine from Saliceti's house, terminating beneath the church, and filled it with all the powder they had.
The date fixed for firing the mine was the 13th of February 1769, towards night.
Giulio had nursed his wrath till there was as little pity in his heart as in a musket-bullet. "To-morrow!" he said trembling, "to-morrow! Let me apply the match; they struck me in the face; I will give them a stroke that shall strike them as high as the clouds. I will blast them out of Oletta, as if the bolts of heaven had got among them!
"But the women and children, and those who do not know of it? The explosion will carry away every house in the neighbourhood."
"They must be warned. They must be directed under this or the other pretext to go to the other end of the village at the hour fixed, and that in all quietness."