Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. by Various
page 83 of 294 (28%)
page 83 of 294 (28%)
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distributed. This spare diet and the absence of covering had one 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, Pépé 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. Pépé 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 Lemaître, 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, Pépé, 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 |
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