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"You will permit me,' said I, 'to treat you without ceremony, and drop titles?

"That is what I wish,' replied he: 'I have at least derived this benefit from adversity-I can smile at all pomps and vanities; I assure you I value myself more as a man than as being a king.'

86 Morning and evening," continues Pellico, we held long conversations together; and in spite of what I considered a farce in him, his mind seemed to me upright, candid, and desirous of every moral good. Several times I was on the point of saying to him- Pardon me, I would fain believe that you are Louis XVII., but in sincerity I must confess that a conviction to the contrary is too strong for me; be, then, so frank as to give up this imposture.' But I put it off from day to day, always waiting for an increase of our intimacy, and I never had courage to say what I intended."

After reproaching himself for this weakness, or pusillanimity, as he calls it, Pellico goes on to say-"The turnkeys of the prison were all inclined to believe that he was really Louis XVII.; and as they had seen so many changes of political fortune, they were not without hopes that he would one day ascend the throne of France and remember their devoted service to him. With the exception of favouring his escape, they treated him with all the kindness and respect he could desire. It was to this I was indebted for the honour of once seeing the great personage: he was of middling stature, apparently between forty and forty-five years of age, rather fat, and of an essentially Bourbonic physiognomy. It is probable that an accidental resemblance to the Bourbons had induced him to play this miserable part."

In the course of their melancholy conversations, which were carried on through the bars of their cell-windows, without their being able to see each other, they occasionally spoke of ethics and religion; and Pellico says the soi-disant duke was a man of religious feelings, though not altogether a good Catholic.

From this very curious account it will appear that, let him have been what he might, the prisoner of Milan was

no common impostor. But he becomes still more interesting, and his story more involved or mysterious, from the following facts, which have been related to us by an Italian gentleman now resident in England, who knew the man well at Modena.

In the spring of 1819, our friend, having come from his residence in the country to spend some time at the capital of the little state of which he was a subject, went one evening to the theatre at Modena, and took his seat behind a person of most gentlemanly appearance, who was taking a lively interest in the comedy, though evidently not an Italian, but a foreigner. In the course of the evening they fell into conversation. The stranger not only spoke excellent Tuscan or pure Italian, but talked with the greatest facility in the patois or peculiar dialect of the place. From something, however, that fell from him, Signor was given to understand (what, at first, he could scarcely credit) that the stranger was a Frenchman; and they then conversed for some time in French. The conversation, suggested by the place they were in, turned chiefly on the drama and poetry, on which subjects the Frenchman spoke with a fine critical taste, extensive knowledge, and an unusual degree of liberality and emancipation from national prejudices: his conversation was superior to his manner and appearance; it was that not merely of a refined gentleman, but of an accomplished scholar.

Signor was so struck with all this, that at the end of the performance he followed the stranger out of the theatre, and, as it had come on to rain heavily, offered him the shelter of his umbrella, which the Frenchman accepted. Their roads lay in different directions, but our friend politely insisted on seeing him to his own door, which he did; and, on parting, named the hotel in which he was staying to the stranger, who thereon said that he knew it well and had lived there himself.

Signor full of the curious meeting of the evening, and with an uncertain sort of recollection of having seen the stranger somewhere before, on reaching the hotel, asked the people of the house what they knew

of such a person (describing his dress and personal appearance) who had been their guest. Their answer was hesitating and rather mysterious. They knew little of the gentleman, except that he had come from Corsica a short time before; that his name was De Bourlon; but they hinted that he must be a person of consideration, as he had been seen in familiar conversation with some of the greatest personages of Modena, and was allowed the use of one of the Count di the governor's, car

riages.

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The next morning the stranger called to thank Signor for his civility. Seen by daylight, and without his hat, his most striking likeness to the Bourbon family instantly struck the Italian, who was now indeed puzzled to know what to make of his new acquaintance. After conversing for some time, the two went out for a walk. In the principal street of Modena they met the military governor, who bowed to the Frenchman in a most respectful manner. On the bastions they met the Grand Duke of Modena himself, who saluted the stranger as Sovereigns salute persons of the very highest rank, and went aside with him for several minutes of conversation.

During this walk, Signor observed that the Frenchman was lame, that he seemed occasionally to be in pain, and that his countenance, the general expression of which was frank and open, was now and then clouded and agitated. On separating from his mysterious companion, Signor the chief magistrate of the city, and asked him, as an old and confidential friend, to tell him what he knew about the stranger.

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The magistrate knew, or pretended to know, little enough but he used these remarkable words: "Chi sa se non abbiamo qui un altra storia dell' uomo della maschera di ferro?" (who knows whether we have not got here another story of the Man with the Iron-Mask?) and he hinted that it would be as well if Signor shunned the Frenchman.

In spite of this, however, our friend's curiosity and

all possible respect. These instructions came from the Grand Duke in person, who, moreover, supplied the captive's table from his own palace.

When he was first arrested, the keeper of the hotel, with his family, waiters, and other servants, and the people of the house where he last lived, were all summoned before the commissaries of police, and questioned as to the persons who had intimately associated with the French gentleman. Having revealed the very little they had to tell on this head, -for the stranger's associates had been few and most respectable, they were dismissed, and advised to hold their tongues as to what had passed.

Men who have passed all their lives in a free country like England, can hardly understand it; but those who have lived any time in despotic countries, and particularly under the smaller and more prying and timid despotisms of Italy, will easily conceive why Signor

was

made uneasy by the foregoing intelligence. As the best step he could take, he went at once to his acquaintance the magistrate, avowed that he had cultivated an intimacy with one who was now a state-prisoner, and that he could hardly have expected there was an impropriety in his so doing, after he had seen the stranger honoured by the first personages of Modena, and even by the sovereign himself. The magistrate reassured him: there was no cause for uneasiness; this was a mystery—a curious story, perhaps a serious one-but it neither concerned the Duke of Modena nor his subjects. Meanwhile, the prisoner had been carried across the frontiers, and (as related before in the words of Silvio Pellico) had been given over to the Austrians, who conveyed him to the fortress of Mantua. For some time, even the Austrians treated him with the greatest respect; but then, in consequence of sudden orders from Vienna, he was removed from the fortress of Mantua to the gaol of Milan, and subjected to the treatment of a common criminal and cut-purse. It was here that Pellico formed his curious acquaintance with him, and here Signor -'s own knowledge of

his adventures ends.

But what follows still more darkens this singular romance of real and modern life. After a long confinement at Milan, during which many of the political prisoners besides Pellico became acquainted with him, the Frenchman was liberated, but escorted out of Lombardy and the Austrian dominions by gens-d'armes. He took the route across the lake of Como and the Alps; and, a few days after his departure from Milan, a person answering to his description was found dead by the road-side in one of the Swiss valleys. The body was pierced by more than one wound; but whether they had been dealt by the hand of a suicide or an assassin, could not be clearly ascertained. No doubt, however, was entertained in Milan that the body thus found was that of the strange man who had called himself the Duke of Normandy and Louis XVII.

In the next story we have to relate, the imposture is of a more bare-faced and vulgar nature; and the dupes of it, for the most part, are neither distinguished by education nor intelligence. The narrative, however, has some striking points, and the manœuvres of four clever vagabonds contributed to hasten the counter-revolution of a kingdom and the triumph of the celebrated Cardinal Ruffo. For the facts we are chiefly indebted to General Colletta's History of the Kingdom of Naples, which is one of the best of contributions to the modern history of Europe. The writer of this notice, however, may add a few particulars which he picked up himself in travelling through the scene of the adventures in 1816 and 1817 when the story was fresh in the minds of everybody, and but too many simple Apulians were still living who had to blush at their former credulity.

In 1799, a French army, under General Championnet, took possession of nearly all the kingdom of Naples; and a republic, on the model of the French, was proclaimed at the capital. The Bourbon King, Ferdinand, fled with his family and court into Sicily, but they left numerous partisans behind them; for the Neapolitan people hated both the French and the republic, and were

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