A Detective’s Story

The Italian revolution was at its [height]. The mountain defiles were swarming with marauders, and the nobility had flocked to the capital, or sought refuge from imperial avarice in another land.

Those who preferred a life of freedom to servility that attended submission sought refuge in New Orleans. Among them was Cassina de Rita, in whose veins stirred the blood of the Colonnas, and whose sword had been first in defence of his country’s outraged liberties and insulted honor.

Young in years, he was old in fame; and when resistance was no longer of any avail, with his wife and child he came to New Orleans. His wife was the daughter of a noble, high in rank and a soldier under the banner of Emanual, an only child, sole heiress to his riches, her son the heir to his title. Like our own war, the Italian revolution had engendered fierce jealousies and family dissensions.

Because the wife had adhered to the fortunes of her husband her father disowned her—no rebel’s child, he said, should wear his coronet.

To the exiled family these threats of the old noble mattered but little. Time, they thought, would appease his resentment, or if it did not, they could rear a new heritage in the land they had come to.

Their many accomplishments, their high rank and fame, gave them a place in the best society. The wife was flattered and admired, the husband the observer of all who did honor to virtue or loved a patriot.

Years wore away the strangeness of their new home, and their sympathies and feelings rapidly became identified with those of our people. No name stood higher among our merchants than that of the exile, while society lavished upon the beautiful Italian all the admiration it bestows upon its queens. The memories that clung to the past were remembered more as a dream than a reality, and the grief they at first had felt had grown into a regret, just as the clouds… Read More