My Ten Years Imprisonment | Page 4

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.

MY TEN YEARS' IMPRISONMENT

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