"Thereafter he was a tiger, a devouring lion, who spread terror through the country districts and avenged his fatherland in the bloodiest way. The poor devil whom I mentioned at the outset of my story became passionately attached to him, and served him with fanatical loyalty. He never stopped to think whether he was _worshipping the past_, or bending the knee to a man who deemed himself superior to him, but who was only his equal before God; whether he was fighting and risking his life for the benefit of a _master_, who might prove to be _ungrateful and despotic_; whether, after destroying the foreign tyranny, as they hoped to do, they would fall again under the yoke of the _old prejudices_, the _old abuses_, the nobles, and the monks. No, all those shades of distrust were too subtle for such a straightforward and simple mind as his. To beg would have seemed a degradation to him in those days; and as for work! why he had never done anything in his life but work, and work zealously, for he loved work, and was not afraid of it. But I do not know whether you have noticed as yet that in Sicily every man does not work who wants to. Although we have the richest and most fertile soil in the world, taxation has destroyed commerce, agriculture, all the industries and all the arts. The man of whom I speak had sought the hardest, roughest, varieties of labor in the salt marshes, in the mines, even in the very bowels of the earth, which, on the surface, was devastated and neglected. Work was lacking everywhere, and all the enterprises in which he had been employed being abandoned, one after another, he was reduced to begging alms of his fellows who were as badly off as he, or to stealing. He preferred to _take_ openly. "But in the _Destatore's_ band they took with discernment and justice. They maltreated and held to ransom none but enemies of the country or traitors. They had a secret understanding with every well-meaning or unfortunate man. They hoped to form a party large enough to attempt to seize one of the three principal cities, Palermo, Catania, or Messina. "But Palermo, before placing confidence in us, demanded that we should be led by a noble; and as the _Destatore_ was supposed to be an adventurer of low birth, he was rejected. If he had told his true name, it would have been worse. He was execrated throughout the country for his previous conduct, and that was a difficulty for which he could blame no one but himself.