ined from him
no assurance, except the characteristic parting word: 'Let us hope in
the future.' When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth
of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the
police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to
Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!'
No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the
Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia
was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous
folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, and its first
consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance
the visit to Turin had been made. For months the Austrians had desired
to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.

Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great
wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best
sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy, by the selection of the
fittest, which at certain junctures makes one man pre-appointed leader
while he is still untried. When in England, the Duke of Sussex
prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro
in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to
be one. He knew, however, more about this and the other secret
societies then existing in Italy--even those of the reactionary
party--than did most of the initiated. In an amusing passage in his
memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable
hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the
chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and
it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect. Things
changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the
complete household was set in motion to serve him. In 1821, he
founded at Milan, not a secret society, but an association in which
all the best patriots were enrolled, and of which the sole engagement
was the formula, repeated on entering its ranks: 'I swear to God, and
on my honour, to exert myself to the utmost of my power, and even at
the sacrifice of my life, to redeem Italy from foreign dominion.'

Knowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have
only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could
not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained
upon h