10

LIFE OF COLONEL MACERONI.

point;—Lepri’s offer was accepted; my grandfather’s conse-quently rejected.

The offer made by my grandfather so considerablyexceeded the rent payable by the preceding lease, that thiscircumstance, together with some others, excited a suspicionof surreptitious means having been employed to obtain theunexpected result. This suspicion acquired double weightfrom the well-known character of the priestly ministerBanchieri, whose name at Rome is still proverbially synony-mous with every thing base, deceitful, and malignant.

It appears that, on the expiration of the lease here spokenof, the Papal government was indebted to my grandfatherin very considerable sums, independently of the amount hehad expended in the construction of the Via Maceroni,which the government had agreed to repay him.

The government, influenced by Banchieri , and true to itsown inherent baseness, proved false to its engagements, anda law-suit was commenced by my grandfather for the pur-pose of enforcing them. It may well be imagined how theproceedings were protracted, when a despotic governmentwas the defendant in the case! However, the fact of theletter having been privately opened was finally proved in allits circumstances ; the minister’s private secretary, whohad been employed on the occasion, confessed his crime,and turned evidence against his patrons. The engraverwho had made the imitation of my grandfather’s seal, aswell as the fraudulent seal itself,* were both discovered andproduced in court; the end of all which was, that mygrandfather obtained a decree of the supreme tribunal ofRome , La Rota, awarding him ample reparation ; orderingthat he should be put in possession of the alum mines, and

* I had this seal, which was of a silver alloy, in my possession untilthe year 1828 , when it was stolen hy a domestic.