Pagina 679 di 896

Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the

populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better

impulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as

some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage. No man

can decide now to which of these motives such extraordinary

scenes were referable; it is probable, to a blending of all the

three, with the second predominating. No sooner was the acquittal

pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at another

time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner

by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after his

long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting

from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that

the very same people, carried by another current, would have

rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces

and strew him over the streets.