"Thus emboldened, the rash boy continued to wave his hat and shout the name of Kossuth.
"'Come hither, boy,' cried the soldiers, in strange Italian; 'we wish to speak with you.'
"Attilio, believing that he beheld the countrymen of the Hungarian dictator, approached, but was instantly surrounded and seized, and then, to his astonishment, he found himself in the hands of a party of Croats, whose uniform, in his ignorance of such matters, the boy supposed to be Hungarian.
"They were proceeding to drag him into the guard-house, when Attilio, active and nimble, glided like an eel through their hands, sprang from an open window and escaped, but was closely pursued.
"Fearing to take shelter in our house, which would implicate our innocent parents, and insure their ruthless pillage, he left the town behind him, and fled, bareheaded, towards the woods. As it chanced, he came close to where I was fishing in the Ombrone.
"'Change jackets with me, Adrian!' he exclaimed, 'the Austrians are after me—change, but ask no questions.'
"We exchanged in a moment; my jacket was black, and his a bright green; thus, when he disappeared, the Croats came upon me. I uttered an involuntary cry of real terror as they seized me, and handled me very roughly before they discovered their mistake.
"Then I laughed at them, on which they spitefully broke my rod, and seized my fish basket, with its contents. A closer search was instituted for poor Attilio, and at night he was dragged from our dear mother's arms, and reconducted to the guardhouse, where he was brought before Count Rudolf de Veinrich, colonel of the Regiment de Radetzki.
"Knowing well the kind of hands he had fallen into, Attilio gave himself up for lost; yet he was brave as a lion; his courage never deserted him, and, in contempt of his captors, he spat upon the Austrian flag that hung over the guard-house door. Yet he wept, when in the dark, for the mother from whom he had been torn—the poor little boy of twelve happy years!
"I may mention that though, like the Italians, the Croats generally profess the Catholic religion, in the military portion of that semi-barbarous race there is a strong element of the Greek schism, and of this last was the Regiment de Radetzki composed. Its soldiers had all the worst qualities of the Croat; they were revengeful, deceitful, intemperate, prone to robbery, and officered by Germans, who, when in Tuscany, cared little to restrain their licentiousness.