Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859

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And this ominous silence was all at once broken by the clear,
well-emphasized voice of a judicial officer, reading the sentence; it
was listened to with such breathless attention, that, when the phrase,
_condemned to death_, was uttered, a visible shudder vibrated, like an
electric shock, through the dense mass of human beings, and upturned
faces flushed or grew pallid in an instant; but scarcely were these
simultaneous emotions recognized, when another phrase, _life granted_,
called forth a cry as of one mighty voice. All were spared: but a
sentence, to such as understood its meaning, of living death,--_carcere
duro_ in Spielberg and the Castle of Lubiano,--some for ten, others for
fifteen, and the remainder for twenty years,--was substituted.

This entire ceremony was characteristic of Austrian despotism, aware of
the profound sympathy among the Italians for their patriot martyrs, of
the widespread disaffection, of the necessity of exciting vague and
terrible apprehension,--and at the same time conscious that policy
forbade arousing the fury of despair. The accused were thus kept more
than two years alternating from hope to desperation, the people in
ignorance of the issue, and then, when led out, as they supposed, to
die, they served as a warning to those who dared imperial vengeance,
while, by a sudden act of apparent clemency, the government at once rid
itself of formidable opponents and assumed the character of merciful
executors of law! It was rumored that the consideration of his youth
saved the life of Foresti;--he was sentenced to twenty years'
imprisonment.

From, the scaffold the prisoners were transferred to the Island of St.
Michael. Their transit was more like an ovation than a disgrace. The
better class of spectators embarked in gondolas and followed the
_cortege_ with shouts of encouragement and waving of handkerchiefs;
"Courage, courage, brave patriots!" was their salutation; and when
night fell upon the scene, there rose from the lagoons strains of
instrumental and vocal melody, and improvised recitations breathing
honor, compassion, and hope; so that in spite of bayonets and police,
terrorism and espionage, the voice of their fettered country wafted to
every captive the assurance that he had not striven and been faithful
unto death in vain.

These scenes in Venice were reenacted, with unimportant modifications,
within a few months, at Rome and Turin, at Modena, Parma, and Naples.
The rolls of victims embraced the most highly endowed and heroic men of
the day. Many of them, after years of incarceration, distinguished
themselves in civil and literary life; some perished miserably in
durance; and a few yet survive and enjoy social consideration or
European fame. Among them were representatives of every rank, vocation,
and section of the land,--noblemen, professors, military officers,
advocates, physicians, priests, men of wealth, of genius, and of
character. Those known in America, either personally or by their
writings, are Count Gonfalonieri of Milan, Silvio Pellico, Castilla,
Borsieri, Maroncelli, and Foresti. The abortive revolutions of 1831 and
1848 sent other refugees to our shores, and canonized other saintly
heroes in the Calendar of Freedom; but these were the original, and, as
a body, the remarkable men, who, imbued with the intelligent and
progressive Liberalism of the nineteenth century, practically
established in Italy by Napoleon, bravely initiated the vital reaction
invoked by humanity as well as patriotism, before which European
despotism has never ceased to tremble, and which, however baffled,
postponed, and misunderstood, by the law of God as well as the
development of man, is absolutely destined to an ultimate triumph.

The show of justice and clemency was made at noonday with every
circumstance of pomp and authority to give it popular effect; the trial
and punishment were enacted in darkness and isolation. On a cold, still
night of January came police commissioners to the island, whither the
condemned patriots had been conveyed amid tears and benedictions, and
chained them in couples like galley-slaves. By the light of torches
they were placed in boats which glided noiselessly by sleeping Venice
to Mestre, and there they were transferred to carriages, two prisoners
and four guards to each vehicle, and in this manner, for four dreary
weeks, borne through the winter days farther and farther from country
and home,--sleeping at night in town-jails, by-way fortresses, or, when
neither were available, in the worst apartments of lonely inns. Who can
adequately describe the wretchedness of that journey, the bitterness of
soul, the prospective desolation, the tender regrets of those unhappy
prisoners,--torn from the embrace of kindred, the dignity and motive of
a high career, the most beautiful of countries, and the most sacred of
ties and duties, to bury their youth, with all its high dreams and
noble fervor and consecrated gifts, in a distant dungeon? Even the
strangers through whose domain they passed testified by looks, signs,
respectful greetings, and, when possible, kind attentions, their
sympathy and esteem; people of rank continued to approach them in
disguise merely to indicate their humane recognition; the very
commissioners sent to attest the execution of the sentence parted from
their charge with tearful respect. Grief, privation, and fatigue,
greatly aggravated by the shackles which bound them in pairs, had
exhausted body and mind at the end of the journey. From the city of
Brunn, the capital of Moravia, their wan looks sought the mountain
prison above, where frowned the bastions of Spielberg, once a mediaeval
castle, then a fortress, built by the Emperor Charles, and, just before
the battle of Austerlitz, dismantled by Napoleon, and now the place of
confinement for the most degraded criminals of Austria, nearly a
thousand of whom there expiate their offences. Into this herd of
malefactors were thrust gentlemen, scholars, citizens, for the crime of
patriotism. To each was assigned a cell, twelve feet in length and
eight in breadth, with a small iron-barred window, a plank with, a
mattress and blanket, an iron chair secured to the wall, and an earthen
jug for water. Arrayed in convict uniform, here the brave youths were
immured. Sentinels were continually on guard in the corridors and court
and around the bastions; the food was inadequate and often loathsome;
an hour's walk in the yard daily, between two soldiers with loaded
muskets, was the only respite from solitude and inaction; "Lives of the
Saints" were the only books allowed; intercourse with the outward world
was entirely cut off; surveillance was incessant; on Sunday they were
guarded to the chapel, but kept apart; every quarter appeared a priest,
who strove, by rigid examination, to elicit political secrets; the
agents and officials maintained an unmitigated reserve; what transpired
in the world, how it fared with their country and their loved ones, was
unknown; existence so near to death itself, in passivity, "cold
obstruction," alienation from all the interests, the hopes, and the
very impressions of human life, it is impossible to imagine.
Subsequently reforms were introduced, and the rigors of this system
somewhat modified; but the era of Foresti's confinement at Spielberg
was that which has become accursed in political history as the reign of
Francesco Primo. He insisted to the last on chains, the badge of crime,
and the severest _regime_ possible to life. He had even visited Brunn,
and been within hearing of his victims, and sent his physician to
ascertain their condition; but refused any mitigation of sufferings,
moral and physical, which involved sanity, health, and almost vitality.

The details of this experience are familiar through current European
memoirs. Silvio Pellico has made the life of an Austrian
prisoner-of-state, in its outward environment and inward struggles, as
well known as that of the Arctic explorer or the English
factory-operative. A confirmatory supplement to this dark chapter in
the history of modern civilization has recently appeared from the pen
of another of Foresti's fellow-martyrs, Pallavicino. [Footnote:
_Spielbergo e Gradisca: Scene del Carcere Duro di_ GIORGIO PALLAVICINO.
Torino. 1856.] But while they were undergoing the bitter ordeal, it was
all but unknown in Europe and undreamed of in America; literature, that
noble vantage-ground for oppressed humanity, has now broken the silence
and proclaimed the truth. There was one solace ingeniously obtained by
these buried members of the living human family,--occasional indirect
intercourse with each other: the telegraphs of eye and ear conveyed
their mutual feelings. One after another succumbed, from the vital
injuries of the _regime_; in one case the brain grew weak, in another
the blood was impoverished or fevered; this one was prostrated by
gangrene in wounds caused by chafing fetters, and that attenuated by
insufficient nourishment: yet they contrived to make known to each
other how it fared with them respectively. Pellico, through an
indulgent guard, sent Foresti verses on his birthday; Maronchelli
sounded on the wall the intimation of his continued existence after his
leg was amputated; and when marshalled for a walk or convened on Sunday
in the chapel, the devoted band had the melancholy satisfaction of
beholding each other, though the different groups were not permitted to
communicate. Andryane, a French officer, included in the original
edict, though upon most inadequate evidence, describes, with keen
interest, his first impressions when permitted to go to mass at
Spielberg. His companion speculated on the identity of each of the
captives. "That one, with dejected looks and hollow eyes, who seems so
exhausted, and, though a tall man, is bent down into a dwarf, is Villa.
Poor fellow! he has but a few months to live. As for the last one, with
the stern looks and bushy black hair, he appears to bear his fate in
such a manner as ought to make us resigned to our own." "That,"
whispered a fellow-prisoner, "is Foresti, who, like Ajax, doubtless
mutters between his teeth, 'I will foil them yet, though even the gods
oppose me!'" [Footnote: "_Memoires d'un Prisonnier d'Etat_." Par
ALEXANDRE ANDRYANE. Paris.]

This observation was sagacious. It was by calm resolution and
philosophic self-possession, through faith in the ultimate triumph of
justice and freedom, that Foresti kept at bay the corrosive despair
which irritated less noble characters into melancholy or wasted spirits
of gentler mould to insanity. Yet his physical torture was extreme. Of
robust frame and in the plenitude of youthful vigor when arrested, the
want of food during the earlier years of his captivity made serious and
permanent inroads upon a naturally powerful constitution. We have heard
him relate, with a humorous emphasis indicative of brave endurance, yet
suggestive of the keenest pangs, how eagerly he one day seized a
pudding, thrust under his dress, as he passed the lodge of an official
in the court, by a compassionate woman,--how ingeniously he concealed
it from the sentinels, at the risk of burning his hands,--with what
triumph he unfolded and with what voracity he devoured it in the
solitude of his cell. Sometimes an indignity overcame his
self-possession, as, on one occasion, when the jailer's attendant
rudely awoke him with a kick, as he deposited a basin of hot broth,
which Foresti indignantly seized and dashed its scalding contents into
the face of the brutal menial, who thenceforward was more respectful in
his salutations. But it was the moral suffering against which all his
wisdom and courage were invoked to struggle,--the resolute maintenance
of healthful mental activity, without an object or motive underived
from will,--the repression of hopeless, vague, self-tormenting
reverie, which perverts intellect and drains moral energy,--the
habitual exercise of memory, reflection, and fancy, to preserve their
functions unimpaired. Such expedients were of special necessity at
Spielberg; for never were educated men so barbarously deprived of the
legitimate resources of mind and heart; thought and love were left
uninvited, unappeased. Sir Walter Raleigh had the materials, at the
Tower, to write a history; Lafayette, at Olmutz, lived in perpetual
expectancy of release; Moore and Byron, children, flowers, birds, and
the Muses cheered Leigh Hunt's year of durance: but in this bleak
fortress, innocent and magnanimous men beheld the seasons come and go,
night succeed day, and year follow year, with no cognizance of kindred
or the world's doings,--no works of bard or sage,--no element of
life,--but a grim, cold, deadly routine within stone walls,--all tender
sympathies, the very breath of the soul, denied,--all influx of
knowledge, the food of the mind, prohibited, experience a blank,
existence a void!

Had we need of evidence that conscience is a normal attribute of
humanity, that the soul is endowed with relations to the Infinite, we
should find it in the self-preservation realized under such
circumstances as these. Only conscious rectitude could arm humanity
against the sense of degradation and deprivation thus surrounding and
pressing upon it for years,--only the belief in a Power above and
beyond human will and perversity,--only, in a word, the recuperative
force of moral individuality and aspiration, could keep intact and
uninvaded the integrity of conscious being. Of course, the method
thereof depends on character; a cheerful heart In one, a buoyant
imagination in another, and the sweet self-oblivion which Faith imparts
in a third, sentiment here and will there, work the same miracle.
Foresti belonged to that class of Italians who combine perspicacity and
force of reasoning with a frank, affectionate, and trustful
disposition,--types of the manly intellect, the childlike heart;
incarceration, while it failed to enfeeble the former, by seclusion
from life's game and the world's encroachments from early youth to
middle age, perhaps confirmed the latter into the candid and loving
nature which endeared him to so many friends in Europe and America.
Sterne says, that, if he were in a desert, he would love some cypress;
and Isaac Taylor has observed, that the devout heart can find in a
single blade of grass the evidence of a Divine Creator. We have all
read of Bruce testing his fate, when a captive, by the gyrations of a
spider, of Baron Trenck finding solace in a dungeon in the
companionship of a mouse, and the imaginative prisoner of Fenestrelle
absorbed in vigilant and even affectionate observation of a little
plant,--its germination, slow approach to maturity, and consummate
flowering. But there were alleviating circumstances in the situation of
these captives,--a definite hope of release or a certainty of
life-bondage, either of which alternatives is more favorable to
tranquillity of soul than absolute suspense; they enjoyed tidings from
without or indulgences within. At Spielberg, the _sistema diabolico_,
as it has been justly called, especially at the epoch of Foresti's
incarceration, retained the galling chain on the limbs, cut off the
supply of moral and intellectual vitality, refused appropriate
occupation, baffled hope, eclipsed knowledge, and kept up a vile
inquisitorial process to goad the crushed heart, sap the heroic will,
and stupefy or alienate the mental faculties; dawn ushered in the
twilight of a mausoleum, noon fell dimly on paralyzed manhood, night
canopied aggravating dreams.

"To such sad pitch their gathering griefs were wrought,
Life seemed not life, save when convulsed by thought."

Casual evasions of this fiendish torture, through ingenuity or the
compassion of officials, are among the few animated episodes of their
dreary experiences recorded by the victims. At length the Emperor died
(an event they had surmised from a change in the form of the public
prayer); his son Ferdinand succeeded to the throne, and signalized his
accession by a decree liberating the Italian patriots, but condemning
them to perpetual exile in America. Those long years of such captivity
did not even gain them the privilege of again enjoying civil rights,
their country, and kindred! Protests were vain, appeals disregarded. In
November, 1835, their chains were removed; the same blacksmith who had
welded Foresti's shackles fourteen years before, now severed them, and
wept with joy as they fell! One night they were all summoned to the
director's room, and he, too, announced their enfranchisement with
congratulations; the prison garb was exchanged for citizen's dress, and
they were taken in carriages to the police prison of Brunn, where
comfortable apartments, good food, free intercourse, books, and
newspapers awaited them. Imagine the vividness of their sensations, the
hilarity of feeling inspired by the first sight of scenes and objects
associated with their youth! It was like a new birth. To grasp the
hands and hear the voices of their fellow-creatures,--to behold
streets, _caffes_, and shops, the tokens of industry, the insignia of
life,--to taste viands unknown for years,--to see the horizon,--to feel
the breath of heaven,--to trace once more those charts of living
history, the journals, resume acquaintance with favorite authors,
converse together, move unchained, think aloud,--this sudden and entire
transition awakened a sensation of almost infantile joy. But privation
had too long been their lot to be instantly ignored with impunity; a
reaction followed; the weakness incident to long confinement,
prostrated faculties, and inadequate nourishment brought on illness;
they could not, at once, bear the excitement, digest the food, or
sustain the keen pleasure; and a rigorous climate quelled their
sensitive vitality. But universal sympathy now environed them; their
very custodian ministered to their wants; and the Emperor ordered them
to be removed to the Castle of Gradisca, on the confines of Italy,
where a milder atmosphere prevailed.

How much had occurred while these years of arbitrarily imposed
monasticism crept heavily by, to excite the speculative thought and
kindle the sympathies of educated men! To what new aspects of
civilization and fresh phases of contemporaneous history their
liberation suddenly introduced them!

Their journey from Brunn to Gradisca was a perfect contrast to that
melancholy transit, so many years before, from Venice to Spielberg. It
was near the beginning of April, 1836, when they started in carriages
with a commissary and a few guards; in every town and village through
which they passed, crowds surrounded them with gratulations; the inns
where they stopped were besieged with well-wishers; Nature, too, seemed
to hail their release with vernal beauty; and so they journeyed on, to
be received as honored guests rather than prisoners-of-state at the
Castle of Gradisca. Their sojourn here was as recreative as was
consistent with that degree of supervision necessary to prevent escape;
they were at liberty to walk about, to make and receive visits, to
bathe in the sea, to attend the fairs, and examine the local
celebrities of Friuli; a single commissary often accompanied their
excursions, and personally the most delicate consideration was paid
them. Here, too, the most affecting reunions of long-severed kindred
and friends took place; their relatives hastened hither to embrace
them.

Foresti used to relate many anecdotes illustrative of the sympathy and
respect felt and manifested by strangers during this interlude between
prison and exile. One deserves record here. Two travelling-carriages
arrived at a village-inn, one evening, where they were resting. While
the gentlemen were inspecting the apartments, a lady of distinguished
appearance inquired of a bystander, who the strangers were towards whom
so many friendly glances were directed; soon after, the landlord bore
to them her request for an interview; they rose at her entrance; she
attempted to speak, but her voice faltered, and, with tears, she turned
to her little boys and said, "Kneel, my darlings, to these brave
Italian patriots; they are illustrious victims in the great cause of
Liberty; and you, gentlemen, bless my sons; your blessing will be
fruitful to them of good; it will make them love their country and die
for it, if need be. I am a Pole. My country is oppressed like yours. I
have two brothers compromised in the last insurrection in Cracow. May
God preserve them!"--and weeping bitterly, she retired. They afterwards
learned that her husband was Counsellor of State to the King of
Prussia.

On the 1st of August, 1836, they were transported by night to Trieste,
and, by a singular coincidence, placed on board the same brig-of-war
whence Kozsta was subsequently taken at Smyrna,--an incident memorable
in our subsequent diplomacy, as having occasioned the celebrated letter
of Webster to the Austrian envoy. Provided by that government with warm
clothing, the money they had taken to Spielberg was restored to them,
not, however, in the original gold coin, but in the Vienna bills for
which it had been then exchanged by the police, diminished nearly
two-thirds in value during the interval of fourteen years. The vessel
was uncomfortably crowded; the voyage occupied three months; but they
fared alike with the officers. Towards the close of October, they
beheld the noble bay of New York; and so intense was the satisfaction
with which they first trod American soil, the goal and terminus of such
protracted suffering, that, ever after, the Battery, where they landed,
was hallowed to their memories as consecrated ground.

Within a few days of their arrival, a banquet was given them by their
compatriots; and from that hour, Foresti became the oracle and the
consoler, the teacher, almoner, and chief of his fellow-exiles.
Subsequent events drove many other Italian patriots to our shores; his
purse and his counsel were ever ready for the impoverished and
inexperienced, who regarded him with filial admiration; while to the
more educated he was the intimate companion or sympathetic friend.
Through his personal influence, employment was constantly obtained and
kindness enlisted for his countrymen. When the great political crisis
of 1848 occurred, Foresti hastened to Europe; Pius IX., at the urgent
prayer of his sisters and cousins, offered him free entrance to his
dominions, a favor his predecessor might have granted but for the
strong opposition of Cardinal Lambruschini. He took counsel with the
revolutionary leaders at Paris, and passed through Italy to the
frontiers of the Papal States, whence the fatal reaction, supported by
French bayonets, at Rome, sent him back once more to the land of his
adoption, whither he was soon followed by many of the heroic and
unfortunate men who redeemed the martial fame, without being able to
retrieve the fate of Italy.

Of the many Italian exiles who have found an asylum in the United
States, Foresti was preeminently the representative man. The period of
his arrival, the circumstances of his life, and the traits of his
character united thus to distinguish him even among the best educated
and most unfortunate of the political refugees from Southern Europe. At
the time of his arrest, the vilest modern despotism of the Continent
had reached its acme; and the patriotic movements it then sought to
annihilate by a cruelty unparalleled since the Middle Ages were
justified even by conservative reformers, on account of their stringent
moral necessity, the intelligent scope of their advocates, and the high
and cultivated spirit of their illustrious martyrs. As scholars,
citizens, gentlemen, and, in more than one instance, authors of real
genius, these Liberals stand alone, and are not to be confounded with
the perverse Radicals of a subsequent epoch. Moreover, their
aspirations were, as we have seen, more reactionary than experimental;
for the rights for which they conspired had been in a great measure
enjoyed under Europe's modern conqueror, then impotent in action, but
most efficient in remembrance, although isolated on his prison-rock.
Foresti's companion in misfortune has made their mutual wrongs
"familiar as household words"; and to be associated in captivity with
the author of "Le Mie Prigioni" was of itself a passport to the
sympathy of the civilized world.

The interest his previous history inspired was deepened and confirmed
by intimate acquaintance with Foresti. He lived for many years
domesticated in the family of a fellow-countryman; and an _habitue_ of
his apartments was transported in a moment from bustling, prosperous,
and republican New York, to the land of song, of martyrdom, and of
antiquity. The soulful ardor and childlike ingenuousness, the keen
perceptions and earnest will of Foresti suggested an obsolete, or at
least rare type of character; he belonged essentially to the olden days
of loyalty and lore which gave birth to self-reliance on the one hand,
and disinterested feeling on the other. His manner and conversation
had, as it were, an historical as well as national flavor, by virtue
whereof we were borne away from the prosaic and practical spirit of the
age, to the days of chivalry, feudal zeal, and genuine humanity,--when
faith was an inspiration, friendship a moral fact, and manhood, in its
virile simplicity, greater than wealth. Nor were the generous exile's
humble surroundings alien to these impressions: the effigies of his
country's poets were the favorite ornaments of his sitting-room; a
volume of Foscolo on the table, or a fresh letter from Silvio Pellico
under his snuffbox,--the grim, old-fashioned type of his _Sentenza_, as
it was originally distributed through Austrian Italy, and hanging in
its black frame, a memorial of startling import to a freeman's eyes,--a
landscape representing the Castle of Ferrara, the far-away scene of his
youthful life,--and a primitive engraving from one of the old masters
of that city, dedicated to him in one of those euphonious inscriptions
peculiar to Italian artists,--these and such as these tokens of his
experience and tastes gave interesting significance to his
companionship. Nor were indications of present consideration and
usefulness wanting: flowers or dainty needle-work, the offerings of his
fair pupils, applications to him, as President of the Italian
Benevolent Society, diplomas from American colleges, and invitations to
the country, to dinner, and to domestic _fetes_, from the numerous
friends he had won in the free land of his adoption, gave evidence of
social enjoyment and genial activity.

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