message from the Austrian government, requesting me to leave its Italian
domains. Now, as I hold it the obvious duty of any foreigner admitted to
the hospitality of a State, to refrain from all participation in its
civil disturbances, so I thought my honour assailed at this intimation,
and went at once to Vienna, to explain to the minister there (to whom I
was personally known), that though I had, as became man to man, aided
to protect a refugee, who had taken shelter under my roof, from the
infuriated soldiers at the command of his private foe, I had not only
not shared in any attempt at revolt, but dissuaded, as far as I could,
my Italian friends from their enterprise; and that because, without
discussing its merits, I believed, as a military man and a cool
spectator, the enterprise could only terminate in fruitless bloodshed.
I was enabled to establish my explanation by satisfactory proof; and my
acquaintance with the minister assumed something of the character of
friendship. I was then in a position to advocate your cause, and to
state your original reluctance to enter into the plots of the insurgents.
I admitted freely that you had such natural desire for the independence
of your native land, that, had the standard of Italy been boldly hoisted
by its legitimate chiefs, or at the common uprising of its whole people,
you would have been found in the van, amidst the ranks of your
countrymen; but I maintained that you would never have shared in a
conspiracy frantic in itself, and defiled by the lawless schemes and
sordid ambition of its main projectors, had you not been betrayed and
decoyed into it by the misrepresentations and domestic treachery of your
kinsman,--the very man who denounced you. Unfortunately, of this
statement I had no proof but your own word. I made, however, so far an
impression in your favour, and, it may be, against the traitor, that your
property was not confiscated to the State, nor handed over, upon the plea
of your civil death, to your kinsman."