"I recognize thee," he cried in a strange tongue; "thou art the cause of my shame, my wounds, and my misery. It is thou that hast robbed me of happiness, and made me a wretched crippled-mendicant. It shall not be said that I died without revenge."
The bear, by his cries of rage, testified equally that he had recognized his enemy, and held himself in a posture of defiance.
The stranger drew from his pocket a large sharp-pointed knife, calculated, with a frightful sang froid, the leap that he would have to take, and jumped into the pit, brandishing his weapon. Unfortunately, on reaching the ground, he sprained his foot against one of the stones that paved the pit, and which had got displaced. The crowd beheld him fall, and then saw the bear rush upon him, avoid the knife, and, keeping his victim down, play with his head as if it had been a ball, knocking it backward and forward between his paws. Lastly, the incensed animal placed himself upon the breast of the stranger, and stifled him, with every sign of hideous and ferocious triumph. All this passed in less time than we have taken to describe it. The keepers ran to the rescue, and obliged the bear to retire into his iron-grated den. The animal peaceably obeyed, with the visible satisfaction of a satiated vengeance. When they came to raise the man, they found that he was dead.
With the Parisians, every stranger is an Englishman. The report soon spread, confirmed by the journals, that Martin's victim was what they then called an insulaire. Few persons knew that Martin had killed his ancient adversary, the unfortunate Daniel Tissjoebergist.
The following day the bear mounted the tree, excelled himself, picked up the morsels of galette that were thrown down by his admirers, basked in the sun's rays, and regarded with his one small ferocious eye the spot where, the evening before, he had accomplished his long meditated revenge.
THE SICILIAN VESPERS.
Half a mile from the southern wall of the city, on the brink of the ravine of Oreto, stands a church dedicated to the Holy Ghost, concerning which the Latin fathers have not failed to record, that on the day on which the first stone of it was laid, in the twelfth century, the sun was darkened by an eclipse. On one side of it are the precipice and the river, on the other the plain extending to the city, which in the present day is in great part encumbered with walls and gardens; while a square inclosure of moderate size, shaded by dusky cypresses, honey-combed with tombs, and adorned with urns and sepulchral monuments, surrounds the church.
This is now a public cemetery, laid out toward the end of the eighteenth century, and fearfully filled in three weeks by the dire pestilence which devastated Sicily in 1837. On the Tuesday, at the hour of vespers, religion and custom crowded this then cheerful plain, carpeted with the flowers of spring, with citizens wending their way toward the church. Divided into numerous groups, they walked, sat in clusters, spread the tables, or danced upon the grass; and, whether it were a defect or a merit of the Sicilian character, threw off for the moment, the recollection of their sufferings, when the followers of the justiciary suddenly appeared among them, and every bosom was thrilled with a shudder of disgust. The strangers came, with their usual insolent demeanor, as they said, to maintain tranquillity; and for this purpose they mingled in the groups, joined in the dances, and familiarly accosted the women, pressing the hand of one, taking unwarranted liberties with others; addressing indecent words and gestures to those more distant, until some temperately admonished them to depart, in God's-name, without insulting the women, and others murmured angrily; but the hot-blooded youths raised their voices so fiercely that the soldiers said one to another, "These insolent paterini must be armed that they dare thus to answer," and replied to them with the most offensive insults, insisting, with great insolence, on searching them for arms, and even here and there striking them with sticks or thongs. Every heart already throbbed fiercely on either side, when a young woman of singular beauty and of modest and dignified deportment, appeared with her husband and relations, bending their steps toward the church. Drouet, a Frenchman, impelled either by insolence or license, approached her as if to examine her for concealed weapons; seized her and searched her bosom. She fell fainting into her husband's arms, who, in a voice almost choked with rage, exclaimed, "Death, death to the French!" At that moment a youth burst from the crowd which had gathered round them, sprang upon Drouet, disarmed and slew him; and probably at the same moment paid the penalty of his own life, leaving his name unknown, and the mystery forever unsolved, whether it were love for the injured woman, the impulse of a generous heart, or the more exalted flame of patriotism, that prompted him thus to give the signal of deliverance. Noble examples have a power far beyond that of argument or eloquence to rouse the people—and the abject slaves awoke at length from their long bondage. "Death, death to the French!" they cried; and the cry, say the historians of the time, re-echoed like the voice of God through the whole country, and found an answer in every heart. Above the corpse of Drouet were heaped those of victims slain on either side; the crowd expanded itself, closed in, and swayed hither and thither in wild confusion; the Sicilians, with sticks, stones, and knives, rushed with desperate ferocity upon their fully-armed opponents; they sought for them and hunted them down; fearful tragedies were enacted amid the preparations for festivity, and the overthrown tables were drenched in blood. The people displayed their strength, and conquered. The struggle was brief, and great the slaughter of the Sicilians; but of the French there were two hundred—and two hundred fell.
Breathless, covered with blood, brandishing the plundered weapons, and proclaiming the insult and its vengeance, the insurgents rushed toward the tranquil city. "Death to the French!" they shouted, and as many as they found were put to the sword. The example, the words, the contagion of passion, in an instant aroused the whole people. In the heat of the tumult, Roger Mastrangelo, a nobleman, was chosen, or constituted himself their leader. The multitude continued to increase; dividing into troops they scoured the streets, burst open doors, searched every nook, every hiding-place, and shouting "Death to the French!" smote them and slew them, while those too distant to strike added to the tumult by their applause. On the outbreak of this sudden uproar the justiciary had taken refuge in his strong palace; the next moment it was surrounded by an enraged multitude, crying aloud for his death; they demolished the defenses, and rushed furiously in, but the justiciary escaped them; favored by the confusion and the closing darkness, he succeeded, though wounded in the face, in mounting his horse unobserved, with only two attendants, and fled with all speed. Meanwhile the slaughter continued with increased ferocity, even the darkness of night failed to arrest it, and it was resumed on the morrow more furiously than ever; nor did it cease at length because the thirst for vengeance was slaked, but because victims were wanting to appease it. Two thousand French perished in this first outbreak. Even Christian burial was denied them, but pits were afterward dug to receive their despised remains; and tradition still points out a column surmounted by an iron cross, raised by compassionate piety on one of those spots, probably long after the perpetration of the deed of vengeance. Tradition, moreover, relates that the sound of a word, like the Shibboleth of the Hebrews, was the cruel test by which the French were distinguished in the massacre; and that, if there were found a suspicious or unknown person, he was compelled, with a sword to his throat, to pronounce the word ciciri, and the slightest foreign accent was the signal of his death. Forgetful of their own character, and as if stricken by fate, the gallant warriors of France neither fled, nor united, nor defended themselves; they unsheathed their swords, and presented them to their assailants, imploring, as if in emulation of each other, to be the first to die; of one common soldier only is it recorded, that having concealed himself behind a wainscot, and being dislodged at the sword's point, he resolved not to die unavenged, and springing with a wild cry upon the ranks of his enemies, slew three of them before he himself perished. The insurgents broke into the convents of the Minorites and Preaching Friars, and slaughtered all the monks whom they recognized as French. Even the altars afforded no protection; tears and prayers were alike unheeded; neither old men, women, nor infants, were spared; the ruthless avengers of the ruthless massacre of Agosta swore to root out the seed of the French oppressors throughout the whole of Sicily; and this vow they cruelly fulfilled, slaughtering infants at their mothers' breast, and after them the mothers themselves, nor sparing even pregnant women, but, with a horrible refinement of cruelty, ripping up the bodies of Sicilian women who were with child by French husbands, and dashing against the stones the fruit of the mingled blood of the oppressors and the oppressed. This general massacre of all who spoke the same language, and these heinous acts of cruelty, have caused the Sicilian Vespers to be classed among the most infamous of national crimes. But these fill a vast volume, and in it all nations have inscribed horrors of a similar, and sometimes of a blacker dye; nations often more civilized, and in times less rude, and not only in the assertion of their liberty or against foreign tyrants, but in the delirium of civil or religious partisanship, against fellow-citizens, against brothers, against innocent and helpless beings, whom they destroyed by thousands, sweeping away whole populations. Therefore I do not blush for my country at the remembrance of the vespers, but bewail the dire necessity which drove Sicily to such extremities.