Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/26

 for from the poor he had never been known to levy a crust or a coin, and the sympathy of the crowds was wholly with him as they hung about the cathedral walls and outside the winehouse doors, waiting until the prisoner should come out with the strong guard that was to march him to his trial at Massa; which would, they knew, certainly end in his condemnation to the mines of the south or the prisons on the little island that was then glancing to amethyst and gold in the glory of the sunset light, away there to the west on the seas they could not see.

They had not to wait very long. As the time grew near, the people became very quiet in the hush of expectation.

For many and many a year to come, the imagination of the Italian people will be always captivated and blinded by the bastard heroism of the brigand; he is born of the soil and fast rooted in it; he has the hearts of the populace with him; and his most precious stronghold is in their sympathy, from which no laws and no logic of their rulers can dislodge him yet.

Saturnino Mastarna was to all the Maremma shore a hero still.

A few quiet citizens of Grosseto apart,