The Maltese, Barbara, was going off not only with Murat’s fortune, but with his hopes likewise, his salvation, his very life.  They could not believe in such treachery, and the king took it for some manoeuvre of seamanship, and seeing a fishing-boat drawn up on the beach on some nets, he called to his two companions, “Launch that boat!”

They all began to push it down to the sea with the energy of despair, the strength of agony.

No one had dared to leap from the rock in pursuit of them; their enemies, forced to make a detour, left them a few moments of liberty.

But soon shouts were heard:  Giorgio Pellegrino, Trenta Capelli, followed by the whole population of Pizzo, rushed out about a hundred and fifty paces from where Murat, Franceschetti, and Campana were straining themselves to make the boat glide down the sand.

These cries were immediately followed by a volley.  Campana fell, with a bullet through his heart.

The boat, however, was launched.  Franceschetti sprang into it, Murat was about to follow, but he had not observed that the spurs of his riding-boots had caught in the meshes of the net.  The boat, yielding to the push he gave it, glided away, and the king fell head foremost, with his feet on land and his face in the water.  Before he had time to pick himself up, the populace had fallen on him:  in one instant they had torn away his epaulettes, his banner, and his coat, and would have torn him to bits himself, had not Giorgio Pellegrino and Trenta Capelli taken him under their protection, and giving him an arm on each side, defended him in their turn against the people.  Thus he crossed the square as a prisoner where an hour before he had walked as a king.

His captors took him to the castle:  he was pushed into the common prison, the door was shut upon him, and the king found himself among thieves and murderers, who, not knowing him, took him for a companion in crime, and greeted him with foul language and hoots of derision.

A quarter of an hour later the door of the gaol opened and Commander Mattei came in:  he found Murat standing with head proudly erect and folded arms.  There was an expression of indefinable loftiness in this half-naked man whose face was stained with blood and bespattered with mud.  Mattei bowed before him.

“Commander,” said Murat, recognising his rank by his epaulettes, “look round you and tell me whether this is a prison for a king.”

Then a strange thing happened:  the criminals, who, believing Murat their accomplice, had welcomed him with vociferations and laughter, now bent before his royal majesty, which had not overawed Pellegrino and Trenta Capelli, and retired silently to the depths of their dungeon.

Misfortune had invested Murat with a new power.

Commander Mattei murmured some excuse, and invited Murat to follow him to a room that he had had prepared for him; but before going out, Murat put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold and let it fall in a shower in the midst of the gaol.