The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 25, November, 1859

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 cortége 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 régime 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.2 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 régime; 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!'"3

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, caffès, 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 habitué 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 fêtes, from the numerous friends he had won in the free land of his adoption, gave evidence of social enjoyment and genial activity.