Note 3 — Chapter III · FAITH AND LAW AGAINST DESPOTISM. 1825-1840.

"He congratulated me on the fact that circumstances had spared me the tremendous ordeals usually undergone; and seeing me smile at this, he asked me severely what I should have done if I had been required, as others had been, to fire off a pistol in my own ear, which had been previously loaded before my eyes. I replied that I should have refused, telling the initiators that either there was some valve in the interior of the pistol into which the bullet fell—in which case the affair was a farce unworthy of both of us—or the bullet had really remained in the stock: and in that case it struck me as somewhat absurd to call upon a man to fight for his country, and make it his first duty to blow out the few brains God had vouchsafed to him."—Life and Writings of Mazzini, Vol. I. [3]