THE month of October brought round one of the most disagreeable
anniversaries in my life. I was arrested on the 13th of that month in
the preceding year. Other recollections of the same period, also pained
me. That day two years, a highly valued and excellent man whom I truly
honoured, was drowned in the Ticino. Three years before, a young person,
Odoardo Briche, {18} whom I loved as if he had been my own son, had
accidentally killed himself with a musket. Earlier in my youth another
severe affliction had befallen me in the same month.
Though not superstitious, the remembrance of so many unhappy occurrences
at the same period of the year, inspired a feeling of extreme sorrow.
While conversing at the window with the children, and with my fellow
prisoners, I assumed an air of mirth, but hardly had I re-entered my cave
than an irresistible feeling of melancholy weighed down every faculty of
my mind. In vain I attempted to engage in some literary composition; I
was involuntarily impelled to write upon other topics. I thought of my
family, and wrote letters after letters, in which I poured forth all my
burdened spirit, all I had felt and enjoyed of home, in far happier days,
surrounded by brothers, sisters, and friends who had always loved me.
The desire of seeing them, and long compulsory separation, led me to
speak on a variety of little things, and reveal a thousand thoughts of
gratitude and tenderness, which would not otherwise have occurred to my
mind.
In the same way I took a review of my former life, diverting my attention
by recalling past incidents, and dwelling upon those happier periods now
for ever fled. Often, when the picture I had thus drawn, and sat
contemplating for hours, suddenly vanished from my sight, and left me
conscious only of the fearful present, and more threatening future, the
pen fell from my hand; I recoiled with horror; the contrast was more than
I could bear. These were terrific moments; I had already felt them, but
never with such intense susceptibility as then. It was agony. This I
attributed to extreme excitement of the passions, occasioned by
expressing them in the form of letters, addressed to persons to whom I
was so tenderly attached.
I turned to other subjects, I determined to change the form of expressing
my ideas, but could not. In whatever way I began, it always ended in a
letter teeming with affection and with grief.
“What,” I exclaimed, “am I no more master of my own will? Is this
strange necessity of doing that which I object to, a distortion of my
brain? At first I could have accounted for it; but after being inured to
this solitude, reconciled, and supported by religious reflections; how
have I become the slave of these blind impulses, these wanderings of
heart and mind? let me apply to other matters!” I then endeavoured to
pray; or to weary my attention by hard study of the German. Alas! I
commenced and found myself actually engaged in writing a letter!