All that night the captive remained in his cell without sleep. Now and then he paced the fern-covered floor, by the movement hoping to stimulate his thoughts into the conception of some plan that would ensure, less his own safety than that of Lucetta Torreani. But daylight glimmered through the little window, and he was still without any feasible scheme. He had only the slender hope, that the ransom might arrive in time; this and the equally slender expectation of assistance from “Cara Popetta.”
Chapter Thirty.
Brigandage and its Cause.
Brigandage, as it exists in the southern countries of Europe, is only beginning to receive its full measure of credence. There was always a knowledge, or supposition, that there were robbers in Spain, Italy, and Greece, who went in bands, and now and then attacked travellers, plundering them of their purses, and occasionally committing outrages on their persons. People, however, supposed these cases to be exceptional, and that the stage representations of brigand life to which in Transpontine theatres we are treated, were exaggerations, both, as regards the power and picturesqueness of these banded outlaws. There were banditti, of course, conceded every one; but these were few and far between, confined to the fastnesses of the mountains, or concealed in some pathless forest—only showing themselves by stealth and on rare occasions upon the public highways, or in the inhabited districts of the country.
Unhappily, this view of the case is not the correct one. At present, and for a long time past, the brigands of Italy, so far from skulking in mountain caves or forest lairs, openly disport themselves in the plains, even where thickly peopled; not unfrequently making themselves masters of a village, and retaining possession of it for days at a time. You may wonder at the weakness of the Italian governments, that permit such a state of things to exist. But it does exist, sometimes in spite of the governments, but sometimes also with their secret support and connivance—notably in the territories of Rome and Naples. To explain why they connive at it would be to enter upon a religio-political question which we do not care to discuss—since it might be deemed out of place in the pages of a mere romantic tale.
The motive of these governments for permitting brigandage was similar to that which elsewhere gives “comfort and support” to many an association almost as despicable as brigandage. It is the old story of despotism all over the world, Divide et impera; and prince or priest, if they cannot govern a people otherwise, will even rule them through the scourge of the robber.
Were there two forms of religion in Italy, as in Ireland, there would be no brigands. Then there would be no need of them: since in aspiring to political liberty the two parties would satisfactorily checkmate one another, as they have done and still do in Ireland—each preferring serfdom for itself rather than to share freedom with its hated rival.
Since in Italy there is but one religion, some other means was required to check and counteract the political liberty of the people. Despotism had hit upon the device of brigandage, and this is the explanation of its existence.