Yet the world still tolerates these fiends in human form, and kings moreover impose them upon our unhappy countries. God grant the people of Italy will before long have the will and the courage to break this hateful yoke from off their necks! God set us free, before we are weary of praying, from those who take His holy name in vain, and chase Christ himself out of the Temple to set their money-changing stalls therein! CHAPTER XXII. THE BRIGANDS Let us leave for a time these scenes of horror, and follow our fugitives on the road to Porto d'Anzo. Their hearts are sad, for they are leaving many dear to them behind in the city, and their road is one of danger, until it be the sea; but, as they breathe the pure air of the country, their spirits revive--that country once so populated and fertile, now so barren and deserted. Perhaps it would be difficult to find another spot on earth that presents so many objects of past grandeur and present misery as the Campagna. The ruins, scattered on all sides, give pleasure to the antiquary, and convince him of the prosperity and grandeur of its ancient inhabitants, while the sportsman finds beasts and birds enough to satisfy him; but the lover of mankind mourns, it is a graveyard of past glories, with the priests for sextons. The proprietors of these vast plains are few, and those few, priests, who are too much absorbed by the pleasures and vices of the city, to visit their properties, keeping, at the most, a few flocks of sheep or buffaloes. Brigandage is inseparable from priestly government, which is easy to understand when we remember that it is supported by the aid of cowardly and brutal mercenaries. These, becoming robbers, murderers, and criminal offenders, flee to such places as this desert, where they find undisturbed refuge and shelter. Statistics prove that in Rome murders are of more frequent occurrence in proportion to the population than in any other city. And how, indeed, can it be otherwise, when we consider the corrupt education instilled by the priests? The outlaws are styled brigands, and to these may be added troops of runaway hirelings of the priests, who have committed such dreadful ravages during the last few years. We have a sympathy for the wild spirits who seem to live by plunder, but who retire to the plains, and pass a rambling life, without being guilty of theft or murder, in order to escape the humiliations to which the citizen is daily subjected. The tenacity and courage shown by these in their encounters with the police and national guards, are worthy of a better cause, and prove that such men, if led by a lawful ruler, and inspired with a love for their country, would form an army that would resist triumphantly any foreign invader. All "brigands" are, indeed, not assassins. Orazio, a valorous Roman, though a brigand, was respected and admired by all in Trastevere, particularly by the Roman women, who never fail to recognize and appreciate personal bravery.