"It is I, illustrious and excellent governor," returned the wily
Neapolitan, who retained just enough of the liquor he had swallowed to
render him audacious, without weakening his means of observation. "It is
I, Pippo; an artist of humble pretensions, but, I hope, a very honest man
and, as I know, a great reverencer of the laws and a true friend to
order."
"Let the good man speak up boldly. A man of these principles has a right
to be heard. We live in a time of damnable innovations, and of most
atrocious attempts to overturn the altar, the state, and the public
trusts, and the sentiments of such a man are like dew to the parched
grass."
The reader is not to imagine, from the language of the bailiff, that Vaud
stood on the eve of any great political commotion, but, as the Government
was in itself an usurpation, and founded on the false principle of
exclusion, it was quite as usual then, as now, to cry out against the
moral throes of violated right, since the same eagerness to possess, the
same selfishness in grasping, however unjustly obtained, and the same
audacity of assertion with a view to mystify, pervaded the Christian world
a century since as exist to-day.
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