Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and poetic—every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from childhood skilfully woven and intertwisted with the ritual and faith of his fathers,—yearning towards the grave of his mother; yearning towards the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle slumbers and sanctified his childhood’s pillow, and yet burning with the indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half. Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said, “No!” when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked on the splendid snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdle Rome with an eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered retainers of his father’s house, and offering refuge and protection to multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent chieftain, living by his sword. The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular authorities of Italy at this time, made brigandage a respectable and honoured institution in the eyes of the people; though it was ostensibly banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting-men under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be employed on one side or the other; therefore it happened, that, though nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on both sides, with a view to securing their assistance in critical turns of affairs. Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined to the rich and prosperous; who, as they wrung their wealth out of the people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the same kind of high-handed treatment was extended towards themselves.