otest against
certain articles which had appeared in a French journal on the question
of Italian Brigandage, citing this case as an argument to show that
crimes of violence were committed by born Neapolitans within the city
radius, and expressing a sarcastic wonder that the authorities should
have troubled themselves to arrest the criminals though the proofs
against them both were overwhelming.

'Thus it is,' said the accusatore, speaking with a stern passion of
emphasis, 'that these traitors to their country first cast off their
natal ties in order to lead lives of unrestricted profligacy abroad,
and having, in other lands, done all within them to disgrace the land
of their birth, return to it to inflict a wound still deeper upon the
national reputation; and thus it is that these villains, though they
once did their country the honour to repudiate it, return to lay a final
disgrace upon it.'

He pressed with a passionate insistence for the extremest rigour of
the law against us both, and it was plain from the angry murmurs of
the court that this appeal to the national sentiment had told heavily
against me. Then he called his witnesses. The first three were from the
Basso Porto--fit inhabitants of the place. They told substantially the
same story, and all swore that I was engaged in an angry broil with
Grammont and another Englishman whom they did not know. They admitted
that the conversation was carried on in English, but my advocate's
half-contemptuous cross-examination could not set aside the fact that
a quarrel, in which I had taken some part, had taken place. After these
three, Matthew Hollis was called, and the man whom I had watched upon
the quay presented himself. He told, in fair though foreign-sounding
Italian, a plain story. He had been an engine-fitter, and had worked in
France and Italy. He was settled down in business on his own account
in Naples, and on the day to which his story related had work to do
at Posilipo. On his way thither he observed Grammont and myself, and
suspected me of evil designs and watched me. He told how I tried to get
rid of him by sending him upon a message to the Caffe d' Italia, and how
he declined to leave the place. He related how, having seen us part, he
had gone his way to Posilipo, and how, returning thence in the evening
with a workman of his own, he had found the dead body of Grammont on the
road, and had found me lying insensible at a little distance from it.
A close cr