The first to be arrested was Gaetano De-Castillia, who went with the Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini on a mission to Piedmont while the revolution there was at its height.  They even had an interview with the Prince of Carignano, ’a pale and tall young man, with a charming expression’ (so Pallavicini describes him), but had obtained from him no assurance, except the characteristic parting word:  ’Let us hope in the future.’  When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the police with the avowal:  ’It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!’ No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia was arrested on some far more trifling charge.  Pallavicini’s generous folly was rewarded by fourteen years’ imprisonment, and its first consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance the visit to Turin had been made.  For months the Austrians had desired to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.

Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy, by the selection of the fittest, which at certain junctures makes one man pre-appointed leader while he is still untried.  When in England, the Duke of Sussex prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to be one.  He knew, however, more about this and the other secret societies then existing in Italy—­even those of the reactionary party—­than did most of the initiated.  In an amusing passage in his memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect.  Things changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the complete household was set in motion to serve him.  In 1821, he founded at Milan, not a secret society, but an association in which all the best patriots were enrolled, and of which the sole engagement was the formula, repeated on entering its ranks:  ’I swear to God, and on my honour, to exert myself to the utmost of my power, and even at the sacrifice of my life, to redeem Italy from foreign dominion.’

Knowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could not reconcile himself to the idea of flight.  Anonymous warnings rained upon him:  most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was personally on friendly terms.  On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier.  He refused, and next day he was arrested.