Mezzoni the Brigand — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

10 MEZZONI. THE BRIGAND. such cunning disguise that they knew him not. Even the police declared that his person was so en- tirely unknown to them that they might be brought into daily contact with him and yet not know it. Among the Neapolitan peasantry he was called the King of the Mountains. Still, even these people had never seen Mezzoni to know him; if he had ever appeared among them it was not in his true character. When the police, therefore, tried cunningly to bribe them, or to ob- | tain any information through these simple people, they honestly shook their heads and declared that they knew nothing of the famous leader—of course, they would not have betrayed him if it had been in their power—but, doubtless, they spoke the truth. Mezzoni had adopted an ingenious system of se- crecy as it concerned himself, which was of great ad- vantage to his various plans, enabling him to com- mand success which in any other instance would have been impossible. It was universally admitted that without some very extraordinary means at his command, quite beyond the knowledge of the police, such good fortune could not have attended the rob- ber’s career, and superstitious people talked about a league with evil spirits. | The usual stories which circulate through an ex- cited community were rife as to his doings. Some, of course, were untrue, but more were born of the florid imaginations of those who circulated them. By some of these he was represented to be little less than a hero, by others a fiend incarnate, while there were occurrences almost daily, quite authentic, - which served to give an air of reality to those stories which were purely inventions, as it regarded the fa- mous leader of the banditti. comicbooks.co