THE reader must not suppose from the circumstance of my seeing the
Gazette, that I was in the habit of hearing news, or could obtain any.
No! though all the agents employed around me were kind, the system was
such as to inspire the utmost terror. If there occurred the least
clandestine proceeding, it was only when the danger was not felt—when not
the least risk appeared. The extreme rareness of any such occurrences
may be gathered from what has been stated respecting the ordinary and
extraordinary searches which took place, morning, noon, and night,
through every corner of our dungeons.
I had never a single opportunity of receiving any notice, however slight,
regarding my family, even by secret means, beyond the allusions in the
Gazette to my sister and myself. The fears I entertained lest my dear
parents no longer survived were greatly augmented, soon after, by the
manner in which the police director came to inform me that my relatives
were well.
“His Majesty the Emperor,” he said, “commands me to communicate to you
good tidings of your relations at Turin.”
I could not express my pleasure and my surprise at this unexpected
circumstance; but I soon put a variety of questions to him as to their
health: “Left you my parents, brothers, and sisters, at Turin? are they
alive? if you have any letter from them pray let me have it.”
“I can show you nothing. You must be satisfied. It is a mark of the
Emperor’s clemency to let you know even so much. The same favour is not
shown to every one.”
“I grant it is a proof of the Emperor’s kindness; but you will allow it
to be impossible for me to derive the least consolation from information
like this. Which of my relations are well? have I lost no one?”
“I am sorry, sir, that I cannot state more than I have been directed.”
And he retired.
It must assuredly have been intended to console me by this indefinite
allusion to my family. I felt persuaded that the Emperor had yielded to
the earnest petition of some of my relatives to permit me to hear tidings
of them, and that I was permitted to receive no letter in order to remain
in the dark as to which of my dear family were now no more. I was the
more confirmed in this supposition from the fact of receiving a similar
communication a few months subsequently; but there was no letter, no
further news.
It was soon perceived that so far from having been productive of
satisfaction to me, such meagre tidings had thrown me into still deeper
affliction, and I heard no more of my beloved family. The continual
suspense, the distracting idea that my parents were dead, that my
brothers also might be no more, that my sister Giuseppina was gone, and
that Marietta was the sole survivor, and that in the agony of her sorrow
she had thrown herself into a convent, there to close her unhappy days,
still haunted my imagination, and completely alienated me from life.
Not unfrequently I had fresh attacks of the terrible disorders under
which I had before suffered, with those of a still more painful kind,
such as violent spasms of the stomach, exactly like _cholera morbus_,
from the effects of which I hourly expected to die. Yes! and I fervently
hoped and prayed that all might soon be over.
At the same time, nevertheless, whenever I cast a pitying glance at my no
less weak and unfortunate companion—such is the strange contradiction of
our nature—I felt my heart inly bleed at the idea of leaving him, a
solitary prisoner, in such an abode; and again I wished to live.