Captain Mansana and Mothers Hands | Page 5

received
with a laugh, and the reply, volunteered eagerly by several voices at
once, that she had survived till the previous year, and had died at the
age of ninety-five. I could see that her character was pretty well
understood. With no less eagerness these gossips also informed me that
she had lived to see the house freed from the mortgage, one vineyard
bought back, and the whole property cleared of encumbrance. All this
was the result of the gratitude felt towards the martyred patriot whose
praises were now on every tongue, since he had become the great glory

of his native town; for his life and his brother's constituted practically
its only sacrifice to the cause of Italian liberation.
And the old woman had lived long enough to see all this!
I inquired after the wives of the two heroes. I was told that the younger
had succumbed to her troubles--in particular to the crowning stroke of
misfortune which had deprived her of her only child, a daughter. But
the elder, the mother of the two young Mansanas, was still living.
When the townsfolk spoke of her, their faces became graver, their
voices more solemn; the story was told by one of the bystanders with
occasional interpolations by the others, all however with a kind of
seriousness which testified to the influence this noble, high-souled
woman had obtained over them. I heard that she had found means to
communicate with her husband while still in prison. She had been able
to inform him that the Garibaldians had arranged for a rising in the
town and an attack upon it from without, and that they were waiting for
Mansana to escape in order that he might carry forward the movement
in Rome itself. Escape he did, thanks to his own strength of will, and
his wife's acuteness and devotion. By her advice he feigned insanity; he
screamed till his voice gave way, and indeed, till his strength was
exhausted, for he had refused to touch food or drink. At the imminent
risk of death he persevered in this pretence, till they sent him to an
asylum for lunatics. Here his wife was able to visit him, and to arrange
his flight. But when he had escaped from captivity, he would not leave
the town; the important preparations on foot required his presence. His
wife first nursed him back to health and then took part in his hazardous
enterprise. What other man in his place, after this long imprisonment,
would have resisted the temptation to secure his freedom by crossing
the frontier, which was scarcely more than two or three miles distant?
But one of those for whom he had risked life, and all that made life
worth living, betrayed him. He was seized and imprisoned again; and
with his loss the greater part of the scheme, in which he had been
concerned, came to nothing, or resulted only in defeat on the frontier,
and in the condemnation of thousands of the patriots to captivity or the
scaffold in the capital or the provincial towns. Before the hour of
deliverance came, Mansana was beheaded and committed to his grave

among the dead companions of his imprisonment, the thieves and
murderers, who lay buried in the great Cemetery of the Malefactors,
whence his bones had been removed this day.
And now his widow was there to await all that was left of him.
Shrouded in her long dark mantle, she stood in front of the crowd that
filled the flag-bedecked churchyard of Mansana's native town. The
monumental tomb was finished, and that day, after the funeral
ceremony was over, it was to be unveiled amid the thunder of cannon,
answered by the blaze of bonfires from the mountains when darkness
had set in.
Up towards the hill country, across the dusty yellow of the Campagna,
our procession threaded its way. We passed from one mountain town to
another; and everywhere, far as the eye could travel, it lighted on
bareheaded crowds of spectators. The populace from all the
neighbouring villages had gathered on the line of route. Bands of music
filled the narrow streets with sound, bunting and coloured cloths hung
from the windows, wreaths were thrown as the procession passed,
flowers were strewn before it, handkerchiefs waved, and not a few eyes
gleamed bright through tears. So we came at last to Mansana's native
place, where the enthusiasm with which we were received mounted to
the highest pitch, and where our numbers were now augmented by
large crowds of persons who had joined us on the march and
accompanied us for a considerable distance.
The throng was densest in and about the churchyard. But as a foreigner
I was courteously allowed to make my way through, and was enabled
to take up my