to which the recruits were subjected proving hardly so severe at first as I had expected. I belonged to a division of the army which was manoeuvred and inspected once in every week, on a large open space at the distance of little less than ten Italian miles, and the arms and accoutrements which we were obliged to carry with us weighed seventy-two pounds: this was fatiguing, but I got accustomed to it, as a man becomes inured to almost any thing by habit; but the nature of the life itself was so irksome and intolerable to me, that I was never looking forward to anything elsc than to the moment which I should seize for withdrawing myself from it.

The year 1806 was drawing towards its close, when we received orders to march for the Tyrol, and we obeyed our instruc

tions with so much promptitude and diligence, that, by continual forced marches, we very soon reached the place named in our instructions.

Here our corps took up its quarters for some time; and as we were in a new and intricate country, I thought the opportunity a good one for effecting my desertion, which I did, not without having turned it over and over in my mind, but yet without having formed any settled ulterior plan. This was in the last week of that year.

No sooner had I taken the step, than I found that there was neither place nor person that I could trust by the way; my uniform was in itself proof sufficient that I was a deserter, and I was in constant apprehension of falling into the hands of those who would be searching after me:

this made it impossible for me to shew myself by day, but all my nights were passed in traversing the deep forests and wilds of that country.

In the dead of the last of many such nights, I found myself arrived once more within the limits of the Ferrarese territory: where the thoughts of being so near to my native home, and to the kind authors of my being, affected me more than I can express, and I never rested till I found them.

They had been in great grief and perplexity at receiving no tidings from me; and now, upon our meeting, loaded me with every mark of the tenderest affection.

I remained quietly with them some days without the fact of my desertion being known to any body; but so soon as the official intelligence of it was received, it

became once more my fate to witness the

sufferings and persecutions of my family The confiscation was

upon my account. renewed, and my younger brother was peremptorily required to be sent to serve in my room: so that everything connected with me, and dearest to me, was thrown into a state of the greatest misery.

I was sorry now for my rashness, though the consequences of a second desertion were so serious that I durst not come forward, but took the utmost pains to elude detection. I concealed myself in places the least frequented of the country round, sometimes lying in the sheepfolds and outhouses, with the animals and cattle, and sometimes in ditches and holes in the earth; so that a life of wretchedness and privation was all that I had gained by my escape.

VOL. I.

C

Time, which discovers everything, at last brought to light the place where I was lurking; and there, some soldiers, sent for the purpose, suddenly laid hands on me, and made me their prisoner. I was become an object of the utmost military rigour, and, with handcuffs upon me, was dragged or driven through the streets of my native town, where I had been brought up and had lived so respectably, and to which I had returned but so few days before with such feelings of eagerness and attachment.

As soon as my apprehension became known, my father, mother, brother, and sisters, all in the deepest affliction, came to the prison where I was lodged, and filled it with lamentations and regrets. My poor mother, seeing that all hope of having me