Amid all this turmoil and confusion in the Government of Naples—this system of continuous oppression—there was one person who, notwithstanding all his misdeeds, may fairly claim some little share of our commiseration—the King himself. On the evidence of Mr. Gladstone and others, it is clear that Ferdinand was not wholly without his good traits of character. He was not devoid of a certain amount of intelligence.
Tyranny and slavery, however, exercise a doubly evil influence, and harm the despot as much as the victim, the owner as the slave. At the time of the Mazza case, his Majesty, taught by experience, had arrived at that wholesome judgment of persons and things which trusts nobody and nothing. He had long ceased to put confidence even in his own Ministers; political matters he directed himself, and himself wrote all the more important political despatches, many of which display considerable acumen. It would not, indeed, be unfair to impute a portion of his faults to the peculiar character of his subjects, of whom he was wont to say that they differed so much from, and were so greatly inferior to, any other people of the Peninsula, that he alone could govern them.
Meanwhile, Panizzi’s arrangements for the deliverance of the prisoners of San Stefano had been gradually and surely progressing, and to all appearance hopefully. He had communicated to Settembrini the manner in which he proposed to make the attempt, and from him received the following letter:—
“Santo Stefano,
August 31st, 1855.
“As a precaution I write this letter with invisible ink, which will be made legible before it is forwarded to you. For the same reason, and in the same way, your letters of the 30th and 31st July have been sent to me. I cannot tell you what I felt on reading them. You are a man who surpasses every expectation. We dared not hope for a steamer; now you offer us one, it is all that we could desire. From your letter it appears that the steamer will not start from Naples, as I had expected. This matters little to us, but it is most important that it should be known in Naples not less than twelve days before. Communication with this place is neither easy nor frequent, and we must know the date fixed upon at least four days in advance, as there are certain indispensable preparations to be made. Now the time it will necessarily take for this letter to reach you, and for you to come to a determination and give Madame Louison (Settembrini), through some person, twelve days’ notice, will bring us to the month of October, which will be more suitable, as the cold weather and rains will then have set in, moreover the nights will be longer.
In short we are ready, only requiring four days’ notice, but the date fixed upon must be known in Naples twelve days before. In deciding upon the day, however, care should be taken that there be little or no moon during the early hours of the night, and, therefore, it seems to me that we ought to choose some time between the 6th and 18th of October, and, if it could be the night preceding a holiday, so much the better.
We shall, therefore, wait to be informed on what day the steamer will pass, and what will be the signals. We are on the upper floor of the building where there are some small windows which look to westward; in the remainder of the building there are only small apertures and loop-holes which are almost invisible. The third window, commencing from the north, is ours; and from this window we have a view of the whole space between Ponza and Capo Circello. The steamer should carry a conspicuous signal as our telescopes are not very good. She ought to find herself at 4.30 or 5 o’clock two miles from the northern extremity of Ventotene, and then, if it is thought necessary, unfurl a sail to enable us to see and recognize her. Then, if she passes to the east, there will be sufficient time and light to see the wall with an archway, almost immediately below which, on the shore, is a small creek where the boat will have to wait, and where we intend to be at 2 o’clock a.m. When the steamer has lost sight of the small windows she will proceed eastward, bearing to the south, as if making for Messina. During the night she can return from S.S.E. as I have written in another letter, but must not come too near Santo Stefano, and thence she would put out the boat. When we reach the archway, we will make a signal with a lantern, which we will repeat on reaching the sea. If a password is necessary, we might say, God help us, and may God truly help us, and lead me with my companions to a place of safety; I trust I shall not have to write to you again. Keep well.
P.S.—If it should be stormy on the day fixed, the steamer could come, without any signals, on the following day or the first fine one, for we shall commence operations the moment we know the date, and complete them on seeing the steamer; and if a storm should rise while the boat is waiting in the above-mentioned creek, obliging it to put off from the shore, it must make a great effort to return, and throw us a rope which we can lay hold of. It is necessary to foresee what is likely to take place.”
Not long after the date of this letter, Panizzi sent to Mr. Fagan a summary of his plan of rescue, containing all the details of the work, and the mode in which he proposed to carry it out. This ran as follows:—