My Ten Years' Imprisonment Part 9

The two ensuing days I received no answer, and I was glad of it.

"Oh, blessed solitude;" often I exclaimed, "how far holier and better art thou than harsh and undignified a.s.sociation with the living. Away with the empty and impious vanities, the base actions, the low despicable conversations of such a world. I have studied it enough; let me turn to my communion with G.o.d; to the calm, dear recollections of my family and my true friends. I will read my Bible oftener than I have done, I will again write down my thoughts, will try to raise and improve them, and taste the pleasure of a sorrow at least innocent; a thousand fold to be preferred to vulgar and wicked imaginations."

Whenever Tremerello now entered my room he was in the habit of saying, "I have got no answer yet."

"It is all right," was my reply.

About the third day from this, he said, with a serious look, "Signor N. N. is rather indisposed."

"What is the matter with him?"

"He does not say, but he has taken to his bed, neither eats nor drinks, and is sadly out of humour."

I was touched; he was suffering and had no one to console him.

"I will write him a few lines," exclaimed I.

"I will take them this evening, then," said Tremerello, and he went out.

I was a little perplexed on sitting down to my table: "Am I right in resuming this correspondence? was I not, just now, praising solitude as a treasure newly found? what inconsistency is this! Ah!

but he neither eats nor drinks, and I fear must be very ill. Is it, then, a moment to abandon him? My last letter was severe, and may perhaps have caused him pain. Perhaps, in spite of our different ways of thinking, he wished not to end our correspondence. Yes, he has thought my letter more caustic than I meant it to be, and taken it in the light of an absolute and contemptuous dismission.

CHAPTER XLI.

I sat down and wrote as follows:-

"I hear that you are not well, and am extremely sorry for it. I wish I were with you, and enabled to a.s.sist you as a friend. I hope your illness is the sole cause why you have not written to me during the last three days. Did you take offence at my little strictures the other day? Believe me they were dictated by no ill will or spleen, but with the single object of drawing your attention to more serious subjects. Should it be irksome for you to write, send me an exact account, by word, how you find yourself. You shall hear from me every day, and I will try to say something to amuse you, and to show you that I really wish you well."

Imagine my unfeigned surprise when I received an answer, couched in these terms:

"I renounce your friendship: if you are at a loss how to estimate mine, I return the compliment in its full force. I am not a man to put up with injurious treatment; I am not one, who, once rejected, will be ordered to return."

"Because you heard I was unwell, you approach me with a hypocritical air, in the idea that illness will break down my spirit, and make me listen to your sermons . . . "

In this way he rambled on, reproaching and despising me in the most revolting terms he could find, and turning every thing I had said into ridicule and burlesque. He a.s.sured me that he knew how to live and die with consistency; that is to say, with the utmost hatred and contempt for all philosophical creeds differing from his own. I was dismayed!

"A pretty conversion I have made of it!" I exclaimed; "yet G.o.d is my witness that my motives were pure. I have done nothing to merit an attack like this. But patience! I am once more undeceived. I am not called upon to do more."

In a few days I became less angry, and conceived that all this bitterness might have resulted from some excitement which might pa.s.s away. Probably he repents, yet scorns to confess he was in the wrong. In such a state of mind, it might be generous of me to write to him once more. It cost my self-love something, but I did it. To humble one's self for a good purpose is not degrading, with whatever degree of unjust contempt it may be returned.

I received a reply less violent, but not less insulting. The implacable patient declared that he admired what he called my evangelical moderation. "Now, therefore," he continued, "let us resume our correspondence, but let us speak out. We do not like each other, but we will write, each for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, setting everything down which may come into our heads. You will tell me your seraphic visions and revelations, and I will treat you with my profane adventures; you again will run into ecstasies upon the dignity of man, yea, and of woman; I into an ingenuous narrative of my various profanations; I hoping to make a convert of you, and you of me.

"Give me an answer should you approve these conditions."

I replied, "Yours is not a compact, but a jest. I was full of good- will towards you. My conscience does not constrain me to do more than to wish you every happiness both as regards this and another life."

Thus ended my secret connexion with that strange man. But who knows; he was perhaps more exasperated by ill fortune, delirium, or despair, than really bad at heart.

CHAPTER XLII.

I once more learnt to value solitude, and my days tracked each other without any distinction or mark of change.

The summer was over; it was towards the close of September, and the heat grew less oppressive; October came. I congratulated myself now on occupying a chamber well adapted for winter. One morning, however, the jailer made his appearance, with an order to change my prison.

"And where am I to go?"

"Only a few steps, into a fresher chamber."

"But why not think of it when I was dying of suffocation; when the air was filled with gnats, and my bed with bugs?"

"The order did not come before."

"Patience! let us be gone!"

Notwithstanding I had suffered so greatly in this prison, it gave me pain to leave it; not simply because it would have been best for the winter season, but for many other reasons. There I had the ants to attract my attention, which I had fed and looked upon, I may almost say, with paternal care. Within the last few days, however, my friend the spider, and my great ally in my war with the gnats, had, for some reason or other, chosen to emigrate; at least he did not come as usual. "Yet perhaps," said I, "he may remember me, and come back, but he will find my prison empty, or occupied by some other guest--no friend perhaps to spiders--and thus meet with an awkward reception. His fine woven house, and his gnat-feasts will all be put an end to."

Again, my gloomy abode had been embellished by the presence of Angiola, so good, so gentle and compa.s.sionate. There she used to sit, and try every means she could devise to amuse me, even dropping crumbs of bread for my little visitors, the ants; and there I heard her sobs, and saw the tears fall thick and fast, as she spoke of her cruel lover.

The place I was removed to was under the leaden prisons, (I Piombi) open to the north and west, with two windows, one on each side; an abode exposed to perpetual cold and even icy chill during the severest months. The window to the west was the largest, that to the north was high and narrow, and situated above my bed.

I first looked out at this last, and found that it commanded a view of the Palace of the Patriarch. Other prisons were near mine, in a narrow wing to the right, and in a projection of the building right opposite. Here were two prisons, one above the other. The lower had an enormous window, through which I could see a man, very richly drest, pacing to and fro. It was the Signor Caporale di Cesena. He perceived me, made a signal, and we p.r.o.nounced each other's names.

I next looked out at my other window. I put the little table upon my bed, and a chair upon my table; I climbed up and found myself on a level with part of the palace roof; and beyond this was to be seen a fine view of the city and the lake.

I paused to admire it; and though I heard some one open the door, I did not move. It was the jailer; and perceiving that I had clambered up, he got it into his head I was making an attempt to escape, forgetting, in his alarm, that I was not a mouse to creep through all those narrow bars. In a moment he sprung upon the bed, spite of a violent sciatica which had nearly bent him double, and catching me by the legs, he began to call out, "thieves and murder!"

"But don't you see," I exclaimed, "you thoughtless man, that I cannot conjure myself through these horrible bars? Surely you know I got up here out of mere curiosity."

"Oh, yes, I see, I apprehend, sir; but quick, sir, jump down, sir; these are all temptations of the devil to make you think of it! come down, sir, pray."

I lost no time in my descent, and laughed.

CHAPTER XLIII.

At the windows of the side prisons I recognised six other prisoners, all there on account of politics. Just then, as I was composing my mind to perfect solitude, I found myself comparatively in a little world of human beings around me. The change was, at first, irksome to me, such complete seclusion having rendered me almost unsociable, add to which, the disagreeable termination of my correspondence with Julian. Still, the little conversation I was enabled to carry on, partly by signs, with my new fellow-prisoners, was of advantage by diverting my attention. I breathed not a word respecting my correspondence with Julian; it was a point of honour between us, and in bringing it forward here, I was fully aware that in the immense number of unhappy men with which these prisons were thronged, it would be impossible to ascertain who was the a.s.sumed Julian.

To the interest derived from seeing my fellow-captives was added another of a yet more delightful kind. I could perceive from my large window, beyond the projection of prisons, situated right before me, a surface of roofs; decorated with cupolas, campanili, towers, and chimneys, which gradually faded in a distant view of sea and sky. In the house nearest to me, a wing of the Patriarchal palace, lived an excellent family, who had a claim to my grat.i.tude, for expressing, by their salutations, the interest which they took in my fate. A sign, a word of kindness to the unhappy, is really charity of no trivial kind. From one of the windows I saw a little boy, nine or ten years old, stretching out his hands towards me, and I heard him call out, "Mamma, mamma, they have placed somebody up there in the Piombi. Oh, you poor prisoner, who are you?"