But obeying to our rigorous duty as publishers, also in this night before Easter, and in this very Easter morning we have given, in a very brief and simple form, without clamour or exaggeration, without lugubrious inventions, the news which the idleness of this M. Fedele had changed in a tolling of bells, and in a breath of death. It is natural that Prefects, under Prefects, Commissaries of Prefecture, should have been more than concerned, and that at head quarters they should have kept watch all night, giving orders on all the lines, awakening every body, and mobilitating every thing. Has not our M. Fedele spread terror every where? Later on in that same Easter morning, while our hearts rejoicing, especially this year when the day had brought peace and resurrection, every body was suddenly saddened by the spreading of this false news, not given by us, but thrown among us in the most emphatic and cruel way, spreading sorrow in the hardly revived spirits of the people, announcing that there were dead and wounded, even among the officers and the soldiers. Oh! poor mothers of officers and soldiers near and far away, you must have been the first to get the sad news, this low lying news, and your poor heart must have been broken before you were able to know that this news it was false.
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If an example is not given, if cowardice, lying, and foolishness are not punished, life will become even more difficult and complicated than it is for all those who have duties and responsibilities, and for the mass of citizens who need to rebuild for themselves a quiet and laborious life.
We want to know who must do it, whether this M. Fedele has been or has not been punished, he who has not only deserted his place, but who has upset this whole region through his fright? Will he be punished? Will all those functioneers, who believed this foolish news, and have called for help before knowing the truth, will they be called and invited to show some courage, some cold blood, and equilibrium? As for the Agenzia Stefani which has covered itself with ridicule during all the period of the eruption, telegraphing all over the world, that the Vesuvian Observatory had been destroyed, while the news was false, and which has been obliged to contradict the news that it had given half an hour before, it has already been justly and severely upbraided and censured by our Prefect who will write to Rome to the central Government, that the director may be called, and an investigation made. Let the culprits be punished, and let none of them have the chance to escape, or to invent any thing more. Let nobody throw panic among those who have duties to fulfil in these sad and trying moments.
Let nobody start panic in Naples, in this city which must revive and begin again its work and energy. If a whole city like ours, a whole region, a whole population, from a prince of the House of Savoia to the humblest of soldiers must fall at the mercy of a frightened panic-stricken man, of an official whose business is to be forever mistaken, we would like to know if such absurd thing must be tolerated, if such thing has to continue. Let all those who have any fault in the panic of last night, be punished, and let military power interfere where it must, and government one where it wants and can, provided this dangerous and annoying scandal should not be repeated.
Let the Neapolitan public, the great punisher, act as it knows how to act when needed, and let it severely punish those newspapers that have printed false news exagrerating ruin and death.