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The assassins in the forest and their victim, as well as the judges and the pretended Colonel Boizard, had been playing a role; and the most suspicious Carbonari now knew how far their new brother would carry the constancy of his heroism and the observance of his oath.
When Orsini attempted to execute the sentence of death on the Emperor of the French, in obedience to the order of the Carbonari, of which the Emperor was a member, he was, if the theory of the origin of government in compact be true, no more an assassin than was the officer who executed on the gallows the rebel spies and incendiaries Beal and Kennedy.
Besides which he had already dipped into the conspiracies of the French "carbonari"; he had been arrested, and released for want of proof; and finally, as he called the newspaper proprietors to observe, he had lately grown a mustache, and needed only a hat of certain shape and a pair of spurs to represent, with due propriety, the Republic.
Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt. The scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted. Such extreme measures were not necessary.
Lélia, a female Faust or Manfred, a mysterious muse-like heroine, who one night sleeps on the heathery mountain-side, the next displays the splendor of a queen in palaces and fairy-like villas; her sorely tried and hapless lover, Sténio, the poet, who pours forth odes to his own accompaniment on the harp, and lingers the night long among Alpine precipices brooding over the abyss; Trenmor, the returned gentleman convict and Apostle of the Carbonari, whose soul has been refreshed, made young and regenerated at the galleys; and the mad Irish priest, Magnus, are impossible personages, inviting to easy ridicule, and neither wisdom nor folly from their lips is likely to beguile the ears of the present generation.
The work in question is concerned, however, with the solemnities which obtain in Masonic temples, with the names and addresses of all French lodges, so that it is a directory as much as a revelation, with the political organisation of the Carbonari, with the Judge-Philosophers, and with certain official documents of Masonry.
About three months had passed since the reception of the French officer; and having received no news from his brethren, he thought that the duties of the Carbonari must be very inconsiderable, when one day he received a mysterious letter enjoining him to be the following night in a neighboring wood, at a certain spot exactly at midnight, and to wait there until some, one came to him.
I will tell you what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round your neck the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the Place de Grève. You are the headsman's property! there is no escape for you. You belong to a vendita of the Carbonari. You are plotting against the Government." "You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Léon.
As to the Carbonari, there is every reason to think that they belonged by secret ramifications to the German societies; but as I have already said, I have not been able to obtain exact information as to them. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to repeat here what I heard concerning the initiation of a Carbonari. This story, which may perhaps be only imaginary, struck my attention deeply.
In a word, the societies of these Italian Carbonari did but engender schemes in which the abler chiefs disguised new forms of despotism, and in which the revolutionary many looked forward to the overthrow of all the institutions that stand between Law and Chaos.
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