Transcribed from the 1886 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: Book cover]
CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
* * * * *
MY
TEN YEARS’ IMPRISONMENT.
BY
SILVIO PELLICO.
_TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN_
BY
THOMAS ROSCOE.
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1886.
INTRODUCTION.
SILVIO PELLICO was born at Saluzzo, in North Italy, in the year of the
fall of the Bastille, 1789. His health as a child was feeble, his temper
gentle, and he had the instincts of a poet. Before he was ten years old
he had written a tragedy on a theme taken from Macpherson’s Ossian. His
chief delight as a boy was in acting plays with other children, and he
acquired from his father a strong interest in the patriotic movements of
the time. He fastened upon French literature during a stay of some years
at Lyons with a relation of his mother’s. Ugo Foscolo’s _Sepolcri_
revived his patriotism, and in 1810, at the age of twenty-one, he
returned to Italy. He taught French in the Soldiers’ Orphans’ School at
Milan. At Milan he was admitted to the friendship of Vincenzo Monti, a
poet then touching his sixtieth year, and of the younger Ugo Foscolo, by
whose writings he had been powerfully stirred, and to whom he became
closely bound. Silvio Pellico wrote in classical form a tragedy,
_Laodicea_, and then, following the national or romantic school, for a
famous actress of that time, another tragedy, _Francesca di Rimini_,
which was received with great applause.
After the dissolution of the kingdom of Italy, in April 1814, Pellico
became tutor to the two children of the Count Porro Lambertenghi, at
whose table he met writers of mark, from many countries; Byron (whose
_Manfred_ he translated), Madame de Stael, Schlegel, Manzoni, and others.
In 1819 Silvio Pellico began publishing _Il Conciliatore_, a journal
purely literary, that was to look through literature to the life that it
expresses, and so help towards the better future of his country. But the
merciless excisions of inoffensive passages by the Austrian censorship
destroyed the journal in a year.
A secret political association had been formed in Italy of men of all
ranks who called themselves the Carbonari (charcoal burners), and who
sought the reform of government in Italy. In 1814 they had planned a
revolution in Naples, but there was no action until 1820. After
successful pressure on the King of the two Sicilies, the forces of the
Carbonari under General Pepe entered Naples on the ninth of July, 1820,
and King Ferdinand I. swore on the 13th of July to observe the
constitution which the Carbonari had proclaimed at Nola and elsewhere
during the preceding month. On the twenty-fifth of August, the Austrian
government decreed death to every member of a secret society, and
_carcere duro e durissimo_, severest pains of imprisonment, to all who
had neglected to oppose the progress of Carbonarism. Many seizures were
made, and on the 13th of October the gentle editor of the _Conciliatore_,
Silvio Pellico, was arrested as a friend of the Carbonari, and taken to
the prison of Santa Margherita in Milan.
In the same month of October, the Emperors of Austria and Russia, and the
Prince of Prussia met at Troppau to concert measures for crushing the
Carbonari.
In January, 1821, they met Ferdinand I. at Laybach and then took arms
against Naples. Naples capitulated on the 20th of March, and on the 24th
of March, 1821, its Revolutionary council was closed. A decree of April
10th condemned to death all persons who attended meetings of the
Carbonari, and the result was a great accession to the strength of this
secret society, which spread its branches over Germany and France.
On the 19th of February, 1821, Silvio Pellico was transferred to
imprisonment under the leads, on the isle of San Michele, Venice. There
he wrote two plays, and some poems. On the 21st of February, 1822, he
and his friend Maroncelli were condemned to death; but, their sentence
being commuted to twenty years for Maroncelli, and fifteen years for
Pellico, of _carcere duro_, they entered their underground prisons at
Spielberg on the 10th of April, 1822. The government refused to transmit
Pellico’s tragedies to his family, lest, though harmless in themselves,
the acting of them should bring good-will to a state prisoner. At
Spielberg he composed a third tragedy, _Leoniero da Dordona_, though
deprived of books, paper, and pens, and preserved it in his memory. In
1828, a rumour of Pellico’s death in prison caused great excitement
throughout Italy. On the 17th of September, 1830, he was released, by
the amnesty of that year, and, avoiding politics thenceforth, devoted
himself to religion. The Marchesa Baroli, at Turin, provided for his
maintenance, by engaging him as her secretary and librarian. With health
made weaker by his sufferings, Silvio Pellico lived on to the age of
sixty-five, much honoured by his countrymen. Gioberti dedicated a book
to him as “The first of Italian Patriots.” He died at Turin on the 1st
of February, 1854.
Silvio Pellico’s account of his imprisonment, _Le Mie Prigioni_, was
first published in Paris in 1833. It has been translated into many
languages, and is the work by which he will retain his place in European
literature. His other plays, besides the two first named, were _Eufemia
di Messina_; _Iginia di Asti_; _Leoniero da Dordona_, already named as
having been thought out at Spielberg; his _Gismonda_; _l’Erodiade_;
_Ester d’Engaddi_; _Corradino_; and a play upon Sir Thomas More. He
wrote also poems, _Cantiche_, of which the best are _Eligi e Valfrido_
and _Egilde_; and, in his last years, a religious manual on the _Duties
of Men_.
H. M.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
HAVE I penned these memorials, let me ask myself, from any paltry vanity,
or desire to talk about that self? I hope this is not the case, and
forasmuch as one may be able to judge in one’s own cause, I think I was
actuated by better views. These, briefly, were to afford consolation to
some unfortunate being, situated like myself, by explaining the evils to
which I was exposed, and those sources of relief which I found were
accessible, even when labouring under the heaviest misfortune; to bear
witness, moreover, that in the midst of my acute and protracted torments,
I never found humanity, in the human instruments around me, so hopelessly
wicked, so unworthy of consideration, or so barren of noble minds in
lowly station, as it is customary to represent it; to engage, if
possible, all the generous and good-hearted to love and esteem each
other, to become incapable of hating any one; to feel irreconcilable
hatred only towards low, base falsehood; cowardice, perfidy, and every
kind of moral degradation. It is my object to impress on all that
well-known but too often forgotten truth, namely, that both religion and
philosophy require calmness of judgment combined with energy of will, and
that without such a union, there can be no real justice, no dignity of
character, and no sound principles of human action.
CHAPTER I.
ON Friday, the 15th of October, 1820, I was arrested at Milan, and
conveyed to the prison of Santa Margherita. The hour was three in the
afternoon. I underwent a long examination, which occupied the whole of
that and several subsequent days; but of this I shall say nothing. Like
some unfortunate lover, harshly dealt with by her he adored, yet resolved
to bear it with dignified silence, I leave _la Politica_, such as SHE IS,
and proceed to something else.
At nine in the evening of that same unlucky Friday, the actuary consigned
me to the jailer, who conducted me to my appointed residence. He there
politely requested me to give up my watch, my money, and everything in my
pockets, which were to be restored to me in due time; saying which he
respectfully bade me good-night.
“Stop, my dear sir,” I observed, “I have not yet dined; let me have
something to eat.”
“Directly; the inn is close by, and you will find the wine good, sir.”
“Wine I do not drink.”
At this announcement Signor Angiolino gave me a look of unfeigned
surprise; he imagined that I was jesting. “Masters of prisons,” he
rejoined, “who keep shop, have a natural horror of an abstemious
captive.”
“That may be; I don’t drink it.”
“I am sorry for you, sir; you will feel solitude twice as heavily.”
But perceiving that I was firm, he took his leave; and in half an hour I
had something to eat. I took a mouthful, swallowed a glass of water, and
found myself alone. My chamber was on the ground floor, and overlooked
the court-yard. Dungeons here, dungeons there, to the right, to the
left, above, below, and opposite, everywhere met my eye. I leaned
against the window, listened to the passing and repassing of the jailers,
and the wild song of a number of the unhappy inmates. A century ago, I
reflected, and this was a monastery; little then thought the pious,
penitent recluses that their cells would now re-echo only to the sounds
of blasphemy and licentious song, instead of holy hymn and lamentation
from woman’s lips; that it would become a dwelling for the wicked of
every class—the most part destined to perpetual labour or to the gallows.
And in one century to come, what living being will be found in these
cells? Oh, mighty Time! unceasing mutability of things! Can he who
rightly views your power have reason for regret or despair when Fortune
withdraws her smile, when he is made captive, or the scaffold presents
itself to his eye? yesterday I thought myself one of the happiest of men;
to-day every pleasure, the least flower that strewed my path, has
disappeared. Liberty, social converse, the face of my fellow-man, nay,
hope itself hath fled. I feel it would be folly to flatter myself; I
shall not go hence, except to be thrown into still more horrible
receptacles of sorrow; perhaps, bound, into the hands of the executioner.
Well, well, the day after my death it will be all one as if I had yielded
my spirit in a palace, and been conveyed to the tomb, accompanied with
all the pageantry of empty honours.
It was thus, by reflecting on the sweeping speed of time, that I bore up
against passing misfortune. Alas, this did not prevent the forms of my
father, my mother, two brothers, two sisters, and one other family I had
learned to love as if it were my own, from all whom I was, doubtless, for
ever cut off, from crossing my mind, and rendering all my philosophical
reasoning of no avail. I was unable to resist the thought, and I wept
even as a child.