It was at this point that Costa persuaded Bakuinin to work for a general insurrection to be times to occur in Italy in the summer of 1874. Bakunin had his better experience of Lyons of 1870 to draw upon; he knew that Garibaldi and the Mazzinians has no taste for the Social Revolution; yet he yielded to the persuasions of Costa who was destined to turn parliamentarism of the worst description. Malatesta was not in contact with Bakunin at the time that this decision was arrived at. He was called upon merely to forward the insurrection when it was too late to change the intention. There resulted the arrest of the Mazzinian Conference in the village Ruffi, near Rimini, on 2nd August, 1874, and the ill-fated outbreaks near Bologna, Florence and elsewhere, where Bakunin played his part. Bakunin has kept a record of this period of anxiety, distress, and error in his diary from July 13th to October 13th. Malateta kept no record but he worked in Apulia as a gun-runner. The rifles were sent to Tarent and reposed in the custom house there as hardware. The intention was to seize the custom house and so obtain the "where- withal." This proved impracticable and the "hardware" was forwarded from custom house to custom house all over Apulia. The peasants did not respond to the insurrectionary appeal and finally the internationalists escaped to Naples hidden under the hay in hay carts. Malatesta remained in hiding at Naples for a few days but was arrested at Pesaro, on his journey to Switzerland, in August, 1874. He remained in prison, untried, until August 5th, 1875. On that day he was released following his triumphant acquittal at the great trial at Trani. This trial led to acquittals al over Italy and also annulled the ferocious sentences which had been passed on the prisoners at the opening trial of these series of suppressions for internationalist "conspiracies," at Rome, in May, 1875. In some of the trials the Assizes were of monstrous length, the Bologna trial lasting from March 15th to June 17th, 1876. It should be explained that the prisoners had been jailed waiting trial since August, 1874. Until the final acquittal was secured the comrades who had been acquitted earlier had to restrain their activity and refrain from propaganda so as not to compromise the case of those in prison. This period of rest prove irksome to Malatesta.

After his release Malatesta went to Locarno and stayed a few days with Cafiero, who was now bitterly opposed to Bakunin. He proceeded to Lugano where he made his last visit to Bakunin. The rupture between Cafiero and Bakunin began in July, 1874, and become complete in September of that year, subsiding into a silent animosity after having received definite expression on September 25th. Bakunin's revolutionary efforts were now at an end owing to his physical sufferings, his terrible poverty, and the resulting intense depression from which he was suffering. Both Bakunin and Cafiero persuade Malatesta to proceed to Spain and to work for the liberation of Alerini, a Marseille comrade who had been in prison there since 1873 owing to his activity in

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