I would either have
been marched to the capital under the escort of a regiment of
carbineers, or kept confined in some rural barracks for half a century
while the authorities were making the necessary researches into the
civil status of my grandmother's favourite poet--an inquiry without
which no Latin dossier is complete.
POSTSCRIPT.--Why are there so many carbineers at Orvinio? And how many
of these myriad public guardians scattered all over the country ever
come into contact with a criminal, or even have the luck to witness a
street accident? And would the taxpayer not profit by a reduction in
their numbers? And whether legal proceedings of every kind would not
tend to diminish?
There is a village of about three hundred inhabitants not far from Rome;
fifteen carbineers are quartered there. Before they came, those
inevitable little troubles were settled by the local mayor; things
remained in the family, so to speak. Now the place has been set by the
ears, and a tone of exacerbation prevails. The natives spend their days
in rushing to Rome and back on business connected with law-suits, not a
quarter of which would have arisen but for the existence of the
carbineers. Let me not be misunderstood. Individually, these men are
nowise at fault. They desire nothing better than to be left in peace.
Seldom do they meddle with local concerns--far from it! They live in
sacerdotal isolation, austerely aloof from the populace, like a colony
of monks. The institution is to blame.
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