Madame Récamier had succoured the Spanish prisoners in Lyons; another victim of the power which struck her enabled her to exercise her compassionate humour at Albano: a fisherman,çoisRené accused of holding intelligence with the subjects of the Pope, had been tried and sentenced to death. The inhabitants of Albano entreated the stranger who had taken refuge with them to intercede for the unfortunate man. She was taken to the gaol; she saw the prisoner; struck by the man's despair, she melted into tears. The unhappy man begged her to come to his assistance, to intercede for him, to save him; his prayer was the more harrowing in that it was impossible to snatch him from the punishment. It was already night, and he was to be shot at sunrise.
Nevertheless, Madame Récamier, although persuaded of the uselessness of her application, did not hesitate. She sent for her carriage and stepped into it, without the hope which she left to the condemned man. She drove through the Campagna infested with brigands, reached Rome, and failed to find the Director of Police. She waited two hours at the Palazzo Fiano, counting the minutes of a life of which the last was approaching. When M. de Norvins arrived, she explained to him the object of her journey. He replied that the sentence was pronounced and that he had not the necessary power to suspend it.
Madame Récamier set out again heart-broken; the prisoner had ceased to live when she approached Albano. The inhabitants were awaiting the Frenchwoman on the road; so soon as they discovered her, they hastened up to her. The priest who had attended the culprit brought her his last vows: he thanked _la dama_, whom he had not ceased to seek with his eyes while going to the place of execution; he begged her to pray for him: for a Christian has not done with everything and is not beyond fear when he is no more. Madame Récamier was led by the ecclesiastic to the church, where the crowd of handsome Albano peasant-women followed her. The fisherman had been shot at the hour at which the sun rose upon the bark, now unguided, which he had been accustomed to steer over the seas and upon the shores which he had been accustomed to survey.
To become disgusted with conquerors, one must have known all the ills they cause, one must have been a witness to the indifference with which men sacrifice to them the most inoffensive creatures in a corner of the globe in which they have never set foot. Of what consequence to Bonaparte's successes were the days of a poor net-maker in the Papal States? Undoubtedly, he never knew that that paltry fisherman existed; amid the clatter of his struggle with kings, he did not so much as know the name of his plebeian victim.