Lorenzo Benoni or Passages in the life of an Italian
Giovanni Ruffini
Paperback
(RareBooksClub.com, May 18, 2012)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 Excerpt: ...it had restored to the throne. Pope Pius VII. had excommunicated it, and the ' mere fact of belonging to it was punished by death. Such monstrous rigour, far from diminishing, had increased the fascination of the sect. A halo of sombre poetry surrounded those exceptional beings, whom the popular imagination pictured as holding their assemblies in woods and caverns at the midnight hour, and continuing their mysterious work, nothing daunted by the thun-Q ders of the Vatican or the prospect of the scaffold. We had no hope left but in our friends in Tuscany, nor did they fail us. Three months after the return of Fantasio, two young men with a message for him came and knocked at his door. Their tidings were at once good and bad. The overtures from the Vendita of Bologna had led to the most satisfactory results. Carbonarism was being organized throughout Tuscany, and Vendite were already established in all the principal towns; but a special order from the original Vendita at Bologna confined the work to Tuscany alone, with an express prohibition against going beyond. This was indispensable, said they, for securing secrecy and unity. Each province had its centre of action limited to the province itself, and without any contact with those of the other provinces of the Peninsula. The supreme Vendita alone, stationed in Paris, held in its grasp all the threads of these different centres, and could at any chosen moment put them in communication with each other. Our Tuscan friends could, therefore, do nothing for us, but send the name and address of one of the chief members of the Vendita at Bologna. The two young delegates had no directions for the good cousins (another appellation for Carbonari) in Genoa; but they were sure, they said, that the work was progressing h...