“I will tell you why. I dare say I feel unnecessarily on the subject, but I can not help it. It is a fact that Brandon was always impulsive and culpably careless about himself. It is to this quality, strangely enough, that I owe my father’s life, and my own comfort for many years. Paolo also owes as much as I. Mr. Brandon, with a friend of his, was sailing through the Mediterranean in his own yacht, making occasional tours into the country at every place where they happened to land, and at last they came to Girgenti, with the intention of examining the ruins of Agrigentum. This was in 1818, four years before I was born. My father was stopping at Girgenti, with his wife and Paolo, who was then six years old. My father had been very active under the reign of Murat, and had held a high post in his government. This made him suspected after Murat’s overthrow. “On the day that these Englishmen visited Girgenti, a woman in deep distress came to see them, along with a little boy. It was my mother and Paolo. She flung herself on the floor at their feet, and prayed them to try and help her husband, who had been arrested on a charge of treason and was now in prison. He was suspected of belonging to the Carbonari, who were just beginning to resume their secret plots, and were showing great activity. My father belonged to the innermost degree, and had been betrayed by a villain named Cigole. My mother did not tell them all this, but merely informed them of his danger. “At first they did not know what to do, but the prayers of my mother moved their hearts. They went to see the captain of the guard, and tried to bribe him, but without effect. They found out, however, where my father was confined, and resolved upon a desperate plan. They put my mother and Paolo on board of the yacht, and by paying a heavy bribe obtained permission to visit my father in prison. Brandon’s friend was about the same height as my father. When they reached his cell they urged my father to exchange clothes with him and escape. At first he positively refused, but when assured that Brandon’s friend, being an Englishman, would be set free in a few days, he consented. Brandon then took him away unnoticed, put him on board of the yacht, and sailed to Marseilles, where he gave him money enough to get to England, and told him to stop at Brandon Hall till he himself arrived. He then sailed back to see about his friend. “He found out nothing about him for some time. At last he induced the British embassador to take the matter in hand, and he did so with such effect that the prisoner was liberated. He had been treated with some severity at first, but he was young, and the government was persuaded to look upon it as a youthful freak. Brandon’s powerful influence with the British embassador obtained his unconditional release.