Almost as soon as they could walk, they assumed the
_cioccie_, or mocassins of untanned leather, with which they learned
to run fearlessly along the edge of the giddiest mountain precipices.
When they had acquired the art of pursuing and escaping, of taking
without being taken, the knowledge of the value of the different
coins, the arithmetic of the distribution of booty, and the principles
of the rights of nations as they are practised among the Apaches or
the Comanches, their education was deemed complete. They required no
teaching to learn how to apply the spoil, and to satisfy their
passions in the hour of victory.
In the year of grace 1806, this sensual, brutal, impious,
superstitious, ignorant, and cunning race endowed Italy with a little
mountaineer, known as Giacomo Antonelli.
Hawks do not hatch doves. This is an axiom in natural history which
has no need of demonstration. Had Giacomo Antonelli been gifted at his
birth with the simple virtues of an Arcadian shepherd, his village
would have instantly disowned him. But the influence of certain events
modified his conduct, although they failed to modify his nature. His
infancy and his childhood were subjected to two opposing influences.
If he received his earliest lessons from successful brigandage, his
next teachers were the gendarmerie. When he was hardly four years old,
the discharge of a high moral lesson shook his ears: it was the French
troops who were shooting brigands in the outskirts of Sonnino.
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