e good
effect, in preserving them from fever, and causing their wounds to heal
rapidly. Their republican enthusiasm continued unabated, at least as
regarded the younger men. "We had four poets amongst us, who sang by
turns extemporary hymns to freedom." After twenty-two days passed in the
granary, Pepe and a number of his companions were placed on board a
Neapolitan corvette. Here they were, if any thing, worse off than in
their previous prison. In a short time they were taken on shore again
and lodged in the Vicaria prison, whence, each day, one or other of them
was conveyed to the scaffold. Pepe was summoned before the Junta of
State, where the bold sharpness of his replies irritated his judge, who
consigned him to the _Criminali_, dark and horrible dungeons,
appropriated to the worst of criminals. Three men loaded with fetters,
and entirely naked, were his companions in this gloomy cavern. Two of
them were notorious malefactors, "the third recalled vividly to my mind
Voltaire's Lusignan in the tragedy of Zaire, which I had been perusing a
few days before. His body was covered with hair, his head bald, a long
and thick black beard contrasted forcibly with his ruddy lips and pearly
teeth." His name was Lemaitre, Marquis of Guarda Alfieri, and he had
been several years imprisoned for participation in a republican
conspiracy.

At last, after six months of the most painful captivity, Pepe, and seven
hundred others sentenced to exile, were put on board three small
vessels, and after a voyage of twenty-two days, during which their
numbers were thinned by a destructive epidemic, were landed at
Marseilles. There the first thing they learned was the arrival of
Buonaparte from Egypt, and his enthusiastic reception in France. During
his absence nothing had gone well, and the French nation looked to him
to redeem their disasters. Italy was again in the hands of the
Austrians. To aid in their expulsion, the formation of an Italian legion
was decreed, and this Pepe hastened to join. Upon reaching Dijon, where
it was organising, he found that every corps had its full compliment of
officers. As a supernumerary he was ordered to a depot, where he would
receive lieutenant's half-pay until his services were required. Like
many others of the exiles, he preferred serving as a volunteer to
remaining idle, and accordingly joined a company of riflemen intended to
be mounted, but who, from the scarcity of horses, were for the most part
on fo