The clamours of the people at this act of sacrilege led me to expect the worst treatment at their hands. Stunned by the blow of a club, I was severely beaten while lying on the beach, and narrowly escaped being poniarded by the hunchback; from whose vindictive malice I was saved only by the intervention of a priest. Elevated on the shoulders of some herdsmen, Truffi now harangued the rabble—proposing, first, that they should tie a stone to my neck and cast me into the sea, or bind me to a tree and make me a target for their rifles at eighty paces. Resistance was vain, as they had securely bound me with my sash. But I demanded instant liberation, and that my sabre should be restored to me; and I threatened severe retribution from our general and the chiefs of the Masse should they dare to maltreat me. Though they laughed at my threats, their effect was not altogether lost; and I was not subjected to further violence. Placed upon a sorry ass, and accompanied by a throng of shouting peasantry, I was conducted back to Crotona in ridiculous triumph, and then thrust into an iron cage at the end of the Casamatta, or ancient prison of the town, where I was left to my own reflections for the remainder of the night, or rather morning—for it was then past three o’clock. I was burning with indignation against these base ragamuffins, whose pomelling made every joint of my body ache; but nevertheless soon fell into a sound sleep on the stone floor of the cage; nor did I awake until the morning sun shone down the picturesque vista of the dilapidated Strada Larga. I arose with stiffened limbs; and at first was unable to comprehend where on earth I was. But the cries of "eretico!" "assassino!" "ribaldone!" &c., and a thousand other injurious epithets with which I had been greeted by the rabble, were yet ringing in my ears, and, together with the disordered state of my dress, brought the whole affair to my recollection. With revengeful bitterness, I remembered the many indignities I had received from Gaspare Truffi: once he had snapped a pistol in my face; twice he attempted to poniard me; and he would probably have had me despatched, but for the firm intervention of an old Basilian father. A dim recollection floated before me of having seen his gnome-like visage peering between the iron bars of the cage long after the crowd had departed—his eyes glaring with hatred and malice that made them glisten like a snake’s beneath the dark shadow of his heavy brows—while he informed me, in the guttural Italian of Naples, that I would "yet feel his knife between my ribs, as he was sworn to revenge his gambling defeat at Nicastro," and the sabre-cut bestowed on his hump at the Villa of Alfieri.