My Ten Years' Imprisonment Part 22

At the end of two days I renewed my solicitations to continue our journey.

We proceeded through Austria and Stiria, and entered Carinthia without any accident; but on our arrival at the village of Feldkirchen, a little way from Klagenfurt, we were overtaken by a counter order from Vienna. We were to stop till we received farther directions. I leave the reader to imagine what our feelings must have been on this occasion. I had, moreover, the pain to reflect, that it would be owing to my illness if my two friends should now be prevented from reaching their native land. We remained five days at Feldkirchen, where the commissary did all in his power to keep up our spirits. He took us to the theatre to see a comedy, and permitted us one day to enjoy the chase. Our host and several young men of the country, along with the proprietor of a fine forest, were the hunters, and we were brought into a station favourable for commanding a view of the sports.

At length there arrived a courier from Vienna, with a fresh order for the commissary to resume his journey with us to the place first appointed. We congratulated each other, but my anxiety was still great, as I approached the hour when my hopes or fears respecting my family would be verified. How many of my relatives and friends might have disappeared during my ten years' absence!

The entrance into Italy on that side is not pleasing to the eye; you descend from the n.o.ble mountains of Germany into the Italian plains, through a long and sterile district, insomuch that travellers who have formed a magnificent idea of our country, begin to laugh, and imagine they have been purposely deluded with previous accounts of La Bella Italia.

The dismal view of that rude district served to make me more sorrowful. To see my native sky, to meet human features no more belonging to the north, to hear my native tongue from every lip affected me exceedingly; and I felt more inclined to tears than to exultation. I threw myself back in the carriage, pretending to sleep; but covered my face and wept. That night I scarcely closed my eyes; my fever was high, my whole soul seemed absorbed in offering up vows for my sweet Italy, and grateful prayers to Providence for having restored to her her captive son. Then I thought of my speedy separation from a companion with whom I had so long suffered, and who had given me so many proofs of more than fraternal affection, and I tortured my imagination with the idea of a thousand disasters which might have befallen my family. Not even so many years of captivity had deadened the energy and susceptibility of my feelings! but it was a susceptibility only to pain and sorrow.

I felt, too, on my return, a strange desire to visit Udine, and the lodging-house, where our two generous friends had a.s.sumed the character of waiters, and secretly stretched out to us the hand of friendship. But we pa.s.sed that town to our left, and pa.s.sed on our way.

CHAPTER XCIV.

Pordenone, Conegliano, Ospedaletto, Vicenza, Verona, and Mantua, were all places which interested my feelings. In the first resided one of my friends, an excellent young man, who had survived the campaigns of Russia; Conegliano was the district whither, I was told by the under-jailers, poor Angiola had been conducted; and in Ospedaletto there had married and resided a young lady, who had more of the angel than the woman, and who, though now no more, I had every reason to remember with the highest respect. The whole of these places, in short, revived recollections more or less dear; and Mantua more than any other city. It appeared only yesterday that I had come with Lodovico in 1815, and paid another visit with Count Porro in 1820. The same roads, the same squares, the same palaces, and yet such a change in all social relations! So many of my connections s.n.a.t.c.hed away for ever--so many exiled--one generation, I had beheld when infants, started up into manhood. Yet how painful not to be allowed to call at a single house, or to accost a single person we met.

To complete my misery, Mantua was the point of separation between Maroncelli and myself. We pa.s.sed the night there, both filled with forebodings and regret. I felt agitated like a man on the eve of receiving his sentence.

The next morning I rose, and washed my face, in order to conceal from my friend how much I had given way to grief during the preceding night. I looked at myself in the gla.s.s, and tried to a.s.sume a quiet and even cheerful air. I then bent down in prayer, though ill able to command my thoughts; and hearing Maroncelli already upon his crutches, and speaking to the servant, I hastened to embrace him. We had both prepared ourselves, with previous exertions, for this closing interview, and we spoke to each other firmly, as well as affectionately. The officer appointed to conduct us to the borders of Romagna appeared; it was time to set out; we hardly knew how to speak another word; we grasped each other's hands again and again,--we parted; he mounted into his vehicle, and I felt as if I had been annihilated at a blow. I returned into my chamber, threw myself upon my knees, and prayed for my poor mutilated friend, thus separated from me, with sighs and tears.

I had known several celebrated men, but not one more affectionately sociable than Maroncelli; not one better educated in all respects, more free from sudden pa.s.sion or ill-humour, more deeply sensible that virtue consists in continued exercises of tolerance, of generosity, and good sense. Heaven bless you, my dear companion in so many afflictions, and send you new friends who may equal me in my affection for you, and surpa.s.s me in true goodness.

CHAPTER XCV.

I set out the same evening for Brescia. There I took leave of my other fellow-prisoner, Andrea Torrelli. The unhappy man had just heard that he had lost his mother, and the bitterness of his grief wrung my heart; yet, agonised as were my feelings from so many different causes, I could not help laughing at the following incident.

Upon the table of our lodging-house I found the following theatrical announcement:- Francesca da Rimini; Opera da Musica, &c. "Whose work is this?" I inquired of the waiter.

"Who versified it, and composed the music, I cannot tell, but it is the Francesca da Rimini which everybody knows."

"Everybody! you must be wrong there. I come from Germany, yet what do I know of your Francescas?" The waiter was a young man with rather a satirical cast of face, quite Brescian; and he looked at me with a contemptuous sort of pity. "What should you know, indeed, of our Francescas? why, no, sir, it is only ONE we speak of--Francesca des Rimini, to be sure, sir; I mean the tragedy of Signor Silvio Pellico. They have here turned it into an opera, spoiling it a little, no doubt, but still it is always Pellico."

"Ah, Silvio Pellico! I think I have heard his name. Is it not that same evil-minded conspirator who was condemned to death, and his sentence was changed to hard imprisonment, some eight or ten years ago?"

I should never have hazarded such a jest. He looked round him, fixed his eyes on me, showed a fine set of teeth, with no amiable intention; and I believe he would have knocked me down, had he not heard a noise close by us.

He went away muttering: "Ill-minded conspirator, indeed!" But before I left, he had found me out. He was half out of his wits; he could neither question, nor answer, nor write, nor walk, nor wait.

He had his eyes continually upon me, he rubbed his hands, and addressing himself to every one near him; "Sior si, Sior si; Yes, sir! Yes, sir!" he kept stammering out, "coming! coming!"

Two days afterwards, on the 9th of September, I arrived with the commissary at Milan. On approaching the city, on seeing the cupola of the cathedral, in repa.s.sing the walk by Loretto, so well known, and so dear, on recognising the corso, the buildings, churches, and public places of every kind, what were my mingled feelings of pleasure and regret! I felt an intense desire to stop, and embrace once more my beloved friends. I reflected with bitter grief on those, whom, instead of meeting here, I had left in the horrible abode of Spielberg,--on those who were wandering in strange lands,-- on those who were no more. I thought, too, with grat.i.tude upon the affection shown me by the people; their indignation against all those who had calumniated me, while they had uniformly been the objects of my benevolence and esteem.

We went to take up our quarters at the Bella Venezia. It was here I had so often been present at our social meetings; here I had called upon so many distinguished foreigners; here a respectable, elderly Signora invited me in vain to follow her into Tuscany, foreseeing, she said, the misfortunes that would befall me if I remained at Milan. What affecting recollections! How rapidly past times came thronging over my memory, fraught with joy and grief!

The waiters at the hotel soon discovered who I was. The report spread, and towards evening a number of persons stopped in the square, and looked up at the windows. One, whose name I did not know, appeared to recognise me, and raising both his arms, made a sign of embracing me, as a welcome back to Italy.

And where were the sons of Porro; I may say my own sons? Why did I not see them there?

CHAPTER XCVI.

The commissary conducted me to the police, in order to present me to the director. What were my sensations upon recognising the house!

it was my first prison. It was then I thought with pain of Melchiorre Gioja, on the rapid steps with which I had seen him pacing within those narrow walls, or sitting at his little table, recording his n.o.ble thoughts, or making signals to me; and his last look of sorrow, when forbidden longer to communicate with me. I pictured to myself his solitary grave, unknown to all who had so ardently loved him, and, while invoking peace to his gentle spirit, I wept.

Here, too, I called to mind the little dumb boy, the pathetic tones of Maddalene, my strange emotions of compa.s.sion for her, my neighbours the robbers, the a.s.sumed Louis XVII., and the poor prisoner who had carried the fatal letter, and whose cries under the infliction of the bastinado, had reached me.

These and other recollections appeared with all the vividness of some horrible dream; but most of all, I felt those two visits which my father had made me ten years before, when I last saw him. How the good old man had deceived himself in the expectation that I should so soon rejoin him at Turin! Could he then have borne the idea of a son's ten years' captivity, and in such a prison? But when these flattering hopes vanished, did he, and did my mother bear up against so unexpected a calamity? was I ever to see them again in this world? Had one, or which of them, died during the cruel interval that ensued?

Such was the suspense, the distracting doubt which yet clung to me.

I was about to knock at the door of my home without knowing if they were in existence, or what other members of my beloved family were left me.

The director of police received me in a friendly manner. He permitted me to stay at the Bella Venezia with the imperial commissary, though I was not permitted to communicate with any one, and for this reason I determined to resume my journey the following morning. I obtained an interview, however, with the Piedmontese consul, to learn if possible some account of my relatives. I should have waited on him, but being attacked with fever, and compelled to keep my bed, I sent to beg the favour of his visiting me. He had the kindness to come immediately, and I felt truly grateful to him.

He gave me a favourable account of my father, and of my eldest brother. Respecting my mother, however, my other brother, and my two sisters, I could learn nothing.

Thus in part comforted, I could have wished to prolong the conversation with the consul, and he would willingly have gratified me had not his duties called him away. After he left me, I was extremely affected, but, as had so often happened, no tears came to give me relief. The habit of long, internal grief, seemed yet to prey upon my heart; to weep would have alleviated the fever which consumed me, and distracted my head with pain.

I called to Stundberger for something to drink. That good man was a sergeant of police at Vienna, though now filling the office of valet-de-chambre to the commissary. But though not old, I perceived that his hand trembled in giving me the drink. This circ.u.mstance reminded me of Schiller, my beloved Schiller, when, on the day of my arrival at Spielberg, I ordered him, in an imperious tone, to hand me the jug of water, and he obeyed me.

How strange it was! The recollection of this, added to other feelings of the kind, struck, as it were, the rock of my heart, and tears began to flow.

CHAPTER XCVII.

The morning of the 10th of September, I took leave of the excellent commissary, and set out. We had only been acquainted with each other for about a month, and yet he was as friendly as if he had known me for years. His n.o.ble and upright mind was above all artifice, or desire of penetrating the opinions of others, not from any want of intelligence, but a love of that dignified simplicity which animates all honest men.

It sometimes happened during our journey that I was accosted by some one or other when un.o.bserved, in places where we stopped. "Take care of that ANGEL KEEPER of yours; if he did not belong to those neri (blacks), they would not have put him over you."

"There you are deceived," said I; "I have the greatest reason to believe that you are deceived."

"The most cunning," was the reply, "can always contrive to appear the most simple."

"If it were so, we ought never to give credit to the least goodness in any one."

"Yes, there are certain social stations," he replied, "in which men's manners may appear to great advantage by means of education; but as to virtue, they have none of it."

I could only answer, "You exaggerate, sir, you exaggerate."