Page:Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843 - Volume 1.djvu/124

 and the wound they inflict—long ugly gash—is less dangerous, but more frightful than a stab. One evening, there was great excitement on a man being fulcinato at a drinking bout, at a neighbouring inn. One of my companions went to see him, and came back, horror-struck; he had a large, deep gash in the thigh, and was nearly dead from loss of blood. When a surgeon came, however, it was found that the wound was not dangerous. He was carried home in a boat; but it was two or three weeks before he could get about again. When these outrages occur, the police carry the aggressors to prison, where they are kept, we are told, ill off enough, till they consent to enlist. The life of a soldier in the Austrian service is so hard, ill-fed, and worse paid, that these poor wretches often hold out long; but they are forced, at last, to yield: nor is the punishment ill imagined, that he who sheds blood should be sent to deal in blood in the legal way. But the root of the evil still rests in the absence of education and civilisation; and one must pity the poor fellows, taken from their glorious mountains and sunny lake, and sent to herd among the sullen Austrians, far in the north, where the sound of their musical Italian shall never reach them more.