ecutioner. The old leaven of independence, innate
in all the aristocracies of Europe; the feudal aspirations which Louis
XI. and Richelieu had so completely annihilated and subdued in France,
yet germinated in the minds of the nobles of Naples. They loved the king
because he maintained their privileges, and had re-established the
rights of their birth. They would have revolted had he touched them.
From pride of birth they would have applauded the execution of a
plebeian conspirator, but were prepared to cry out _en masse_ against
that of Monte-Leone, because he was one of themselves.

The people looked on the illustrious prisoner as a defender of their
rights, and sympathized with him. To sharpen this sympathy, the adepts
of the Italian _vente_ everywhere represented their chief as a martyr to
his love of the people, and a victim of monarchy. Most injurious charges
were everywhere circulated against Fernando IV. It was said that he had
inherited the hatred of Carlos III. to the Monte-Leoni, and sought to
follow out on the son the vengeance to which the father had fallen a
victim. Nothing was omitted that could stimulate the favor of the
superstitious and impressionable people of Naples. The same executioner,
block and axe, which had been used at the father's death, by a strange
fatality, would come in play again at the murder of the son. The
imprisonment of the son at the Castle _Del Uovo_, where the father had
died, gave something of plausibility to this story. But what most
excited public curiosity was the strange incident which had taken place
at _Torre-del-Greco_. All were impatient for its explanation. The double
and impossible presence of the Count at the house of Stenio Salvatori,
and within the fifty locks of the Castle _Del Uovo_, his contest with
his enemy, the wound he was accused of having given him, his ubiquity at
the same hour in different places, produced a thousand incredible
versions, a thousand bets on this wonderful fact, unrivalled in the
judicial annals of Naples.

The name of Monte-Leone was so closely and intimately linked with the
destiny of the Marquis de Maulear, with his friendship to Taddeo, and
his love of Aminta, that he partook of the general interest inspired by
the Count, and as a man of honor hoped for acquittal, notwithstanding
the influence it might exert on his happiness.

To lose confidence in one we love, is the greatest agony possible. The
four days, therefore, which separated