nt they had torn
away his epaulettes, his banner, and his coat, and would have torn him to
bits himself, had not Giorgio Pellegrino and Trenta Capelli taken him
under their protection, and giving him an arm on each side, defended him
in their turn against the people. Thus he crossed the square as a
prisoner where an hour before he had walked as a king.

His captors took him to the castle: he was pushed into the common prison,
the door was shut upon him, and the king found himself among thieves and
murderers, who, not knowing him, took him for a companion in crime, and
greeted him with foul language and hoots of derision.

A quarter of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander
Mattei came in: he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and
folded arms. There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this
half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with
mud. Mattei bowed before him.

"Commander," said Murat, recognising his rank by his epaulettes, "look
round you and tell me whether this is a prison for a king."

Then a strange thing happened: the criminals, who, believing Murat their
accomplice, had welcomed him with vociferations and laughter, now bent
before his royal majesty, which had not overawed Pellegrino and Trenta
Capelli, and retired silently to the depths of their dungeon.

Misfortune had invested Murat with a new power.

Commander Mattei murmured some excuse, and invited Murat to follow him to
a room that he had had prepared for him; but before going out, Murat put
his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold and let it fall
in a shower in the midst of the gaol.

"See," he said, turning towards the prisoners, "it shall not be said that
you have received a visit from a king, prisoner and crownless as he is,
without having received largesse."

"Long live Joachim!" cried the prisoners.

Murat smiled bitterly. Those same words repeated by the same number of
voices an hour before in the public square, instead of resounding in the
prison, would have made him King of Naples.

The most important events proceed sometimes from such mere trifles, that
it seems as if God and the devil must throw dice for the life or death of
men, for the rise or fall of empires.

Murat followed Commander Mattei: he led him to a little room which the
porter had put at his disposal. Mattei was going to retire when Murat
called him back.

"Commander," he said, "I want a