Silvio Pellico

“ One day the jailer permitted him to enter my prison, when he instantly ran to embrace my knees, actually uttering a cry of joy. I took him up in my arms, and he threw his little hands about my neck, and lavished on me the tenderest caresses. How much affection in his smile and manner! how eagerly I longed to have him to educate, raise him from his abject condition, and snatch him, perhaps, from utter ruin. I never even learnt his name; he did not himself know that he had one. ”

“ Our neighbour is none so long eared an animal as you imagine. You do not possess the power of reflection, no not you. I grin and joke; but afterwards I reflect. Every low-born clown can stamp and roar, as we do here. Grant a little more real cheerfulness, a spark more of charity, a bit more faith in the blessing of heaven;--what do you imagine that all this would be a sign of?" "Now, that I also reflect," replied one, "I fancy it would be a sign of being a little less of a brute." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is no elevation of mind, no justice without moderation in principles and ideas, without a pervading spirit which inclines us rather to smile at, than fall into a passion with, the events of this little life. Anger is never productive of any good, except in the extremely rare case of being employed to humble the wicked, and to terrify them from pursuing the path of crime, even as the usurers were driven by an angry Saviour, from polluting his holy Temple. Violence and excitement, perhaps, differing altogether from what I felt, are no less blamable. ”

“ At times I could not help exclaiming to myself, What a strange burlesque is all this! instead of two noble youths, rich in all that nature and fortune can endow them with, here I have a pupil, poor little fellow! deaf, dumb, a castaway; the son of a robber, who at most can aspire only to the rank of an under-jailer, and which, in a little less softened phraseology, would mean to say a sbirro. ”

“ Man often terrifies himself with mere bugbears of the mind. If we would learn not to fear them, we have only to examine them a little more nearly and attentively. What harm, then, if I looked forward to her visits to me with a tender anxiety, if I appreciated their sweetness, if it did me good to be compassioned by her, and to interchange all our thoughts and feelings, unsullied, I will say, as those of childhood. Even her most affectionate looks, and smiles, and pressures of the hand, while they agitated me, produced a feeling of salutary respect mingled with compassion. ”

“ To live at liberty is doubtless much better than living in a prison; but, even here, the reflection that God is present with us, that worldly joys are brief and fleeting, and that true happiness is to be sought in the conscience, not in external objects, can give a real zest to life. In less than one month I had made up my mind, I will not say perfectly, but in a tolerable degree, as to the part I should adopt. ”

“ I am not superstitious; but I was astonished at my own weakness, and I more than once exclaimed in a tone of terror, “Good God! whence comes this strange anxiety and alarm?” and, with a sort of inward vision, my mind seemed to behold the approach of some great calamity. Even yet in prison I retain the impression of that sudden dread and parting anguish, and can recall each word and every look of my distressed parents. The tender reproach of my mother, “Ah! Silvio has not come to Turin to see us!” ”

“ I no longer felt capable of resentment—I could have laid down my life, with the permission of God, for the least of my fellow-creatures, and I yet blest His holy name for having created me—Man!
Wretch that he is who remains ignorant of the sublime duty of confession! Still more wretched who, to shun the common herd, as he believes, feels himself called upon to regard it with scorn! Is it not a truth that even when we know what is required of us to be good, that self-knowledge is a dead letter to us? reading and reflection are insufficient to impel us to it ”

“ To him I shall be the genius of reason and of good; he will learn to confide his sorrows to me, his pleasures, all he feels and wishes; I will console, elevate, and direct him in his whole conduct. It may be that this my lot may be protracted from month to month, even till I grow grey in my captivity. Perhaps this little child may continue to grow under my eye, and become one in the service of this large family of pain, and grief, and calamity. With such a disposition as he has already shown, what would become of him? ”

“ A humane, generous heart, in an age of innocence, is always respectable. I looked on him, therefore, from day to day with increased affection, and was more than ever desirous of cultivating his good qualities, and his growing intelligence. Nay, perhaps we might both live to get out of prison, when I would establish him in the college for the deaf and dumb, and thus open for him a path more fortunate and pleasing than to play the part of a shirro. Whilst thus pleasingly engaged in meditating his future welfare, two of the under-jailers one day walked into my cell. ”

“ One evening, I remember, when suffering under a sad misfortune, the poor girl threw her arms round my neck, and wept as if her heart would break. She had not the least idea of impropriety; no daughter could embrace a father with more perfect innocence and unsuspecting affection. I could not, however, reflect upon that embrace without feeling somewhat agitated. It often recurred to my imagination, and I could then think of no other subject. ”

“ I felt the justice of this reasoning, and lost all feeling of anxiety or terror at the idea of a public execution. I reflected deeply on the sacraments calculated to support me under such an appalling trial, and I felt disposed to receive them in a right spirit. Should I have been enabled, had I really been conducted to the scaffold, to preserve the same elevation of mind, the same forgiveness of my enemies, the same readiness to lay down my life at the will of God, as I then felt? Alas, how inconsistent is man! ”

“ Who knows, but while employed in destroying his letter with every mark of ignominy, he might be reading mine with expressions of kindness and affection; never dreaming I should fly into such a mighty passion at his plain and bold sincerity. Is he not the better of the two, to love and esteem me while declaring he is no Christian; than I who exclaim, I am a Christian, and I detest you. It is difficult to obtain a knowledge of a man during a long intercourse, yet I would condemn him on the evidence of a single letter. ”

“ We often, it is true, broke through this prison-law, and saluted each other from our windows, but no longer engaged in long conversations as we had before done.
In point of disposition, Maroncelli and I were admirably suited to each other. The courage of the one sustained the other; if one became violent the other soothed him; if buried in grief or gloom, he sought to rouse him; and one friendly smile was often enough to mitigate the severity of our sufferings, and reconcile each other to life. ”

“ I would not maintain that the features of good men do not bear the impression of their character, like irreclaimable villains that of their depravity; but that there are many which have at least a doubtful cast. In short, I won a little upon old Schiller; I looked at him more attentively, and he no longer appeared forbidding. To say the truth, there was something in his language which, spite of its rough tone, showed the genuine traits of a noble mind. And spite of our first looks of mutual distrust and defiance, we seemed to feel a certain respect for each other ”

“ Should I adopt the severe, repulsive counsel of fear which we call prudence? Shall I return the letter to Tremerello, and tell him, I do not wish to run any risk. Yet suppose there should be no treason; and the unknown be a truly worthy character, deserving that I should venture something, if only to relieve the horrors of his solitude? Coward as I am, standing on the brink of death, the fatal decree ready to strike me at any moment, yet to refuse to perform a simple act of love! ”

“ This habitual observance of prayer, and the reflection that God is omnipresent as well as omnipotent in His power to save, began ere long to deprive solitude of its horrors, and I often repeated, “Have I not the best society man can have?” and from this period I grew more cheerful, I even sang and whistled in the new joy of my heart. And why lament my captivity? Might not a sudden fever have carried me off? and would my friends then have grieved less over my fate than now? and cannot God sustain them even as He could under a more trying dispensation? ”

“ When you really feel interested about any one, it is indescribable what mere trifles are capable of conferring pleasure. A single word, a smile, a tear, a Venetian turn of expression, her eagerness in protecting me from my enemies, the gnats, all inspired me with a childish delight that lasted the whole day. What most gratified me was to see that her own sufferings seemed to be relieved by conversing with me, that my compassion consoled her, that my advice influenced her, and that her heart was susceptible of the warmest devotion when treating of virtue and its great Author. ”

“ Innocence is sacred, and repentance ought to be equally respected. Did the most perfect of men, the Divinity on earth, refuse to cast a pitying eye on weak, sinful women; to respect their fear and confusion, and rank them among the minds he delighted to consort with and to honour? By what law, then, do we act, when we treat with so much contempt women fallen into ignominy?
While thus reasoning, I was frequently tempted to raise my voice and speak, as a brother in misfortune, to poor Maddalene. ”

“ How delightful, how noble an incentive to all that is great and good, is an intercourse with men of first-rate merit! I was then happy; I would not have exchanged my lot with a prince; and now, to be hurled, as I had been, from the summit of all my hopes and projects, into an abyss of wretchedness, and to be hurried thus from dungeon to dungeon, to perish doubtless either by a violent death or lingering in chains. ”

“ And how could the sacrifice which we owe to virtue be completed, if in the most trying afflictions we struggle against the will of Him who is the source of all virtue? When death on the scaffold, or any other species of martyrdom becomes inevitable, it is a proof of wretched degradation, or ignorance, not to be able to approach it with blessing upon our lips. Nor is it only necessary we should submit to death, but to the affliction which we know those most dear to us must suffer on our account. ”

“ I had known several celebrated men, but not one more affectionately sociable than Maroncelli; not one better educated in all respects, more free from sudden passion or ill-humour, more deeply sensible that virtue consists in continued exercises of tolerance, of generosity, and good sense. Heaven bless you, my dear companion in so many afflictions, and send you new friends who may equal me in my affection for you, and surpass me in true goodness. ”

“ I felt a disposition, while suffering under its horrors, to hate and to curse mankind. Several individuals, in particular, appeared to my imagination depicted in the most revolting colours. It is a sort of moral epidemic, I believe, springing from vanity and selfishness; for when a man despises and detests his fellow-creatures, he necessarily assumes that he is much better than the rest of the world. The doctrine of such men amounts to this:—“Let us admire only one another, if we turn the rest of mankind into a mere mob, we shall appear like demi-gods on earth.” ”