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"And there was a young fellow here," he went on, "who thought he could profit by pretending to be Musolino. So one day he challenged a proprietor with his gun, and took all his money. When it came to Musolino's ears, he was furious furious! He lay in wait for him, caught him, and said: 'How dare you touch fathers of children?
Pleasant to recall, assuredly; the scenery and the mountain flowers are wondrously beautiful; but I have fully realized what the men of Delianuova meant, when they said: "To Montalto, Yes; to Bova, No." Musolino will remain a hero for many long years to come. "He did his duty ": such is the popular verdict on his career. He was not a brigand, but an unfortunate a martyr, a victim of the law.
Speak to the wisest judges of the horrors of cellular confinement such as Musolino was enduring up to a short time ago, as opposed to capital punishment, and you will learn that they invoke the humanitarian Beccaria in justification of it. Theorists! For less formidable criminals there exists that wondrous institution of domicilio coatto, which I have studied in the islands of Lipari and Ponza.
These people and their attitude towards life will remain an enigma to the traveller, until he has acquainted himself with the law of the land and seen with his own eyes something of the atrocious misery which its administration involves. A murderer like Musolino, crowned with an aureole of saintliness, would be an anomaly in England.
Thus, at Christmas they do the Nativity, at Easter the Passion, at Midsummer the story of S. Giovanni Battista; on the 11th of May, the day Garibaldi landed at Marsala, they do the Sicilian episodes from his life; on the anniversary of the day that Musolino, the famous brigand, was arrested, they do his life and on the proper day they commemorate the execution of Anna Bonanno, la Velenatrice, detta la Vecchia dell' Aceto, who sold poisoned vinegar.
We started at last, in the hot hours of the morning, and the road at first skirts the banks of the Alaro, the Sagra of old, on whose banks was fought the fabled battle between the men of Croton and Locri. Then it begins to climb upwards. Full of my impressions of yesterday, I promptly led the conversation towards the subject of Musolino. She had never spoken to him, she said, or even seen him.
Where's that money you took from Don Antonio? Then the boy began to cry and tremble for his life. 'Bring it, said Musolino, 'every penny, at midday next Monday, to such and such a spot, or else Of course he brought it. Then he marched him straight into the proprietor's house. 'Here's this wretched boy, who robbed you in my name. And here's the money: please count it.
We might possibly have done better, but we should have had to search a long time. So we bought it and thought we might take something else as well. Now, it seemed to me, was the time for Carlo Magno and the Paladins or the Life of Musolino, or Robinson Crusoe, or Don Quixote, or The Three Musketeers, but he had read them all, years ago.
It is like that of Musolino the case of an isolated outlaw, who finds the perplexed geographical configuration of the country convenient for offensive and defensive purposes. Calabrian brigandage, as a whole, has always worn a political character. The men who gave the French so much trouble were political brigands, allies of Bourbonism.
The great stairway in that square was shining, wet with the rain; a few seminarians in groups were going up the steps toward the Pincio. Caesar arrived at the Piazza del Popolo and stopped near some ragamuffins who were playing a game, throwing coins in the air. A tattered urchin had written with charcoal on a wall: "Viva Musolino!" and below that he was drawing a heart pierced by two daggers.
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