This 25-page short story recounts the youth of a Roman gentleman, from his birth to his exile in England. Raised according to Catholic principles which he presents as cruel and stupid, he put himself, in 1807, in the service of Napoleon who had just seized Rome, and had to flee when papal power was restored. By recounting, from the point of view of this young man, the struggle between the faithful of the Pope and the Napoleonic administration, Stendhal paints a picture of a credulous and superstitious Roman people deceived by corrupt ecclesiastical authorities. Only emerges from this sinister scene the epic figure of the bandit Spatolino.
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