The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
scenes in Venice were reenacted, with unimportant modifications, within a few months, at Rome and Turin, at Modena, Parma, and Naples. The rolls of victims embraced the most highly endowed and heroic men of the day. Many of them, after years of incarceration, distinguished themselves in civil and literary life; some perished miserably in durance; and a few yet survive and enjoy social consideration or European fame. Among them were representatives of every rank, vocation, and section of the land,—noblemen, professors, military officers, advocates, physicians, priests, men of wealth, of genius, and of character. Those known in America, either personally or by their writings, are Count Gonfalonieri of Milan, Silvio Pellico, Castilla, Borsieri, Maroncelli, and Foresti. The abortive revolutions of 1831 and 1848 sent other refugees to our shores, and canonized other saintly heroes in the Calendar of Freedom; but these were the original, and, as a body, the remarkable men, who, imbued with the intelligent and progressive Liberalism of the nineteenth century, practically established in Italy by Napoleon, bravely initiated the vital reaction invoked by humanity as well as patriotism, before which European despotism has never ceased to tremble, and which, however baffled, postponed, and misunderstood, by the law of God as well as the development of man, is absolutely destined to an ultimate triumph.
The show of justice and clemency was made at noonday with every circumstance of pomp and authority to give it popular effect; the trial and punishment were enacted in darkness and isolation. On a cold, still night of January came police commissioners to the island, whither the condemned patriots had been conveyed amid tears and benedictions, and chained them in couples like galley-slaves. By the light of torches they were placed in boats which glided noiselessly by sleeping Venice to Mestre, and there they were transferred to carriages, two prisoners and four guards to each vehicle, and in this manner, for four dreary weeks, borne through the winter days farther and farther from country and home,—sleeping at night in town-jails, by-way fortresses, or, when neither were available, in the worst apartments of lonely inns. Who can adequately describe the wretchedness of that journey, the bitterness of soul, the prospective desolation, the tender regrets of those unhappy prisoners,—torn from the embrace of kindred, the dignity and motive of a high career, the most beautiful of countries, and the most sacred of ties and duties, to bury their youth, with all its high dreams and noble fervor and consecrated gifts, in a distant dungeon? Even the strangers through whose domain they passed testified by looks, signs, respectful greetings, and, when possible, kind attentions, their sympathy and esteem; people of rank continued to approach them in disguise merely to indicate their humane recognition; the very commissioners sent to attest the execution of the sentence parted from their charge with tearful respect. Grief, privation, and fatigue, greatly aggravated by the shackles which bound them in pairs, had exhausted body and mind at the end of the journey. From the city of Brunn, the capital of Moravia, their wan looks sought the mountain prison above, where frowned the bastions of Spielberg, once a mediaeval castle, then a fortress, built by the Emperor Charles, and, just before the battle of Austerlitz, dismantled by Napoleon, and now the place of confinement for the most degraded criminals of Austria, nearly a thousand of whom there expiate their offences. Into this herd of malefactors were thrust gentlemen, scholars, citizens, for the crime of patriotism. To each was assigned a cell, twelve feet in length and eight in breadth, with a small iron-barred window, a plank with, a mattress and blanket, an iron chair secured to the wall, and an earthen jug for water. Arrayed in convict uniform, here the brave youths were immured. Sentinels were continually on guard in the corridors and court and around the bastions; the food was inadequate and often loathsome; an hour's walk in the yard daily, between two soldiers with loaded muskets, was the only respite from solitude and inaction; "Lives of the Saints" were the only books allowed; intercourse with the outward world was entirely cut off; surveillance was incessant; on Sunday they were guarded to the chapel, but kept apart; every quarter appeared a priest, who strove, by rigid examination, to elicit political secrets; the agents and officials maintained an unmitigated reserve; what transpired in the world, how it fared with their country and their loved ones, was unknown; existence so near to death itself, in passivity, "cold obstruction," alienation from all the interests, the hopes, and the very impressions of human life, it is impossible to imagine. Subsequently reforms were introduced, and the rigors of this system somewhat modified; but the era of Foresti's confinement at Spielberg was that which has become accursed in political history as the reign of Francesco Primo. He insisted to the last on chains, the badge of crime, and the severest régime possible to life. He had even visited Brunn, and been within hearing of his victims, and sent his physician to ascertain their condition; but refused any mitigation of sufferings, moral and physical, which involved sanity, health, and almost vitality.
The details of this experience are familiar through current European memoirs. Silvio Pellico has made the life of an Austrian prisoner-of-state, in its outward environment and inward struggles, as well known as that of the Arctic explorer or the English factory-operative. A confirmatory supplement to this dark chapter in the history of modern civilization has recently appeared from the pen of another of Foresti's fellow-martyrs, Pallavicino.2 But while they were undergoing the bitter ordeal, it was all but unknown in Europe and undreamed of in America; literature, that noble vantage-ground for oppressed humanity, has now broken the silence and proclaimed the truth. There was one solace ingeniously obtained by these buried members of the living human family,—occasional indirect intercourse with each other: the telegraphs of eye and ear conveyed their mutual feelings. One after another succumbed, from the vital injuries of the régime; in one case the brain grew weak, in another the blood was impoverished or fevered; this one was prostrated by gangrene in wounds caused by chafing fetters, and that attenuated by insufficient nourishment: yet they contrived to make known to each other how it fared with them respectively. Pellico, through an indulgent guard, sent Foresti verses on his birthday; Maronchelli sounded on the wall the intimation of his continued existence after his leg was amputated; and when marshalled for a walk or convened on Sunday in the chapel, the devoted band had the melancholy satisfaction of beholding each other, though the different groups were not permitted to communicate. Andryane, a French officer, included in the original edict, though upon most inadequate evidence, describes, with keen interest, his first impressions when permitted to go to mass at Spielberg. His companion speculated on the identity of each of the captives. "That one, with dejected looks and hollow eyes, who seems so exhausted, and, though a tall man, is bent down into a dwarf, is Villa. Poor fellow! he has but a few months to live. As for the last one, with the stern looks and bushy black hair, he appears to bear his fate in such a manner as ought to make us resigned to our own." "That," whispered a fellow-prisoner, "is Foresti, who, like Ajax, doubtless mutters between his teeth, 'I will foil them yet, though even the gods oppose me!'"3
This observation was sagacious. It was by calm resolution and philosophic self-possession, through faith in the ultimate triumph of justice and freedom, that Foresti kept at bay the corrosive despair which irritated less noble characters into melancholy or wasted spirits of gentler mould to insanity. Yet his physical torture was extreme. Of robust frame and in the plenitude of youthful vigor when arrested, the want of food during the earlier years of his captivity made serious and permanent inroads upon a naturally powerful constitution. We have heard him relate, with a humorous emphasis indicative of brave endurance, yet suggestive of the keenest pangs, how eagerly he one day seized a pudding, thrust under his dress, as he passed the lodge of an official in the court, by a compassionate woman,—how ingeniously he concealed it from the sentinels, at the risk of burning his hands,—with what triumph he unfolded and with what voracity he devoured it in the solitude of his cell. Sometimes an indignity overcame his self-possession, as, on one occasion, when the jailer's attendant rudely awoke him with a kick, as he deposited a basin of hot broth, which Foresti indignantly seized and dashed its scalding contents into the face of the brutal menial, who thenceforward was more respectful in his salutations. But it was the moral suffering against which all his wisdom and courage were invoked to struggle,—the resolute maintenance of healthful mental activity, without an object or motive underived from will,—the repression of hopeless, vague, self-tormenting reverie, which perverts intellect and drains moral energy,—the habitual exercise of memory, reflection, and fancy, to preserve their functions unimpaired. Such expedients were of special necessity at Spielberg; for never were educated men so barbarously deprived of the legitimate resources
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