Guiseppe returned to Larino the following day and
he arranged with a priest, who was a friend of the family, to perform a wedding service.When the Count found
out the secret marriage he got nuts. He vowed that the Bishop's palace would be a prison and he set guards to watch the doorways
by day and night. The Count set a value of ten thousand ducati if the girl could be captured alive.The husband,
if he were proven dead, was worth five thousand. Guiseppe got tired of his enforced imprisonment and decided to
confront the tyrant. The Count had the habit
of going for a carriage ride near the Fountain of San Pardo. Guiseppe halted the carriage. The Count was furious. "What
do you want with me?" he snarled.
"I am Guiseppe Maggio Palmieri, and I want your life".
After a struggle the Count got shot and fell lifeless without so much as a cry.
The Count's young brother, a desperate man of ill
reputation, continued to keep Guiseppe and his wife trapped in the Bishop's Palace. In time, Angiolina got pregnant
and their situation became more desperate. Fortunately they were sustained with food by many a friend in
town. After several months, on the 26th of May, Larino was filled with preparations for the festival of the Patron
Saint, San Pardo.
The archway at the left bottom is the doorway to the Bishop's
Hall.
In this day there is a great procession; peasants decorate
their carts with garlands of flowers and ribbons of any colour, these they attach to the bulls dragging the carts.
The carts follow a procession around the town led by the metal-statued town's Saint accompanied by the entire population
of Larino and several villages close by as they sing in praise of their San Pardo.
The procession, to enter the Cathedral, had to pass
the Bishop's Palace where the young married couple was seeking refuge. At that moment when the procession lay still
in a square, along with cheerful singing, Angiolina, thinking she was safe by now, imprudently went to the window.
At precisely that moment the Count's brother recognized her. A shot rang out. Angiolina fell to the floor of the
room. Her husband reached her nearly immediately. He recognized that his young was murdered. In
the midst of his grief his first thought was for the baby. "The mother is dead, but the son will live to save us".
Giuseppe, drenched with blood, emerged from
the Bishop's Palace with his tiny son. With a gun in his hand he killed three of his tormentors, vanished down the
narrow streets of Larino to the Biferno, and from there they escaped to Manfredonia and, eventually, to Trieste.
The son was raised to carried out acts of vengeance to those who held arbitrary power over the people. Giuseppe and
his son had become rebels and anti-monarchist.
