My Ten Years' Imprisonment [71]
Oh, how it irked me to be unable to prosecute my study of him! And there were Dante, Petrarch, Shakespeare, Byron, Walter Scott, Schiller, Goethe, &c.-- how many friends, how many innocent and true delights were withheld from me. Among these I included a number of works, also, upon Christian knowledge; those of Bourdaloue, Pascal, "The Imitation of Christ," "The Filotea," &c., books usually read with narrow, illiberal views by those who exult in every little defect of taste, and at every common-place thought which impels the reader to throw them for ever aside; but which, when perused in a true spirit free from scandalous or malignant construction, discover a mine of deep philosophy, and vigorous nutriment both for the intellect and the heart. A few of certain religious books, indeed, were sent us, as a present, by the Emperor, but with an absolute prohibition to receive works of any other kind adapted for literary occupation.
This imperial gift of ascetic productions arrived in 1825 by a Dalmatian Confessor, Father Stefano Paulowich, afterwards Bishop of Cattaro, who was purposely sent from Vienna. We were indebted to him for performing mass, which had been before refused us, on the plea that they could not convey us into the church and keep us separated into two and two as the imperial law prescribed. To avoid such infraction we now went to mass in three groups; one being placed upon the tribune of the organ, another under the tribune, so as not to be visible, and the third in a small oratory, from which was a view into the church through a grating. On this occasion Maroncelli and I had for companions six convicts, who had received sentence before we came, but no two were allowed to speak to any other two in the group. Two of them, I found, had been my neighbours in the Piombi at Venice.
We were conducted by the guards to the post assigned us, and then brought back after mass in the same manner, each couple into their former dungeon. A Capuchin friar came to celebrate mass; the good man ended every rite with a "let us pray" for "liberation from chains," and "to set the prisoner free," in a voice which trembled with emotion.
On leaving the altar he cast a pitying look on each of the three groups, and bowed his head sorrowfully in secret prayer.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
In 1825 Schiller was pronounced past his service from infirmity and old age; though put in guard over some other prisoners, not thought to require equal vigilance and care. It was a trying thing to part from him, and he felt it as well as we. Kral, a man not inferior to him in good disposition, was at first his successor. But he too was removed, and we had a jailer of a very harsh and distant manner, wholly devoid of emotion, though not intrinsically bad.
I felt grieved; Schiller, Kral, and Kubitzky, but in particular the two former, had attended us in our extreme sufferings with the affection of a father or a brother. Though incapable of violating their trust, they knew how to do their duty without harshness of any kind. If there were something hard in the forms, they took the sting out of them as much as possible by various ingenious traits and turns of a benevolent mind. I was sometimes angry at them, but they took all I said in good part. They wished us to feel that they had become attached to us; and they rejoiced when we expressed as much, and approved of anything they did.
From the time Schiller left us, he was frequently ill; and we inquired after him with a sort of filial anxiety. When he sufficiently recovered, he was in the habit of coming to walk under our windows; we hailed him, and he would look up with a melancholy smile, at the same time addressing the sentinels in a voice we could overhear: "Da sind meine Sohne! there are my sons."
Poor old man! how sorry I was to see him almost staggering along, with the weight of increasing infirmities, so near us, and without being enabled to offer him even my arm.
Sometimes he would sit down upon the grass, and read. They were the same books he had often lent
This imperial gift of ascetic productions arrived in 1825 by a Dalmatian Confessor, Father Stefano Paulowich, afterwards Bishop of Cattaro, who was purposely sent from Vienna. We were indebted to him for performing mass, which had been before refused us, on the plea that they could not convey us into the church and keep us separated into two and two as the imperial law prescribed. To avoid such infraction we now went to mass in three groups; one being placed upon the tribune of the organ, another under the tribune, so as not to be visible, and the third in a small oratory, from which was a view into the church through a grating. On this occasion Maroncelli and I had for companions six convicts, who had received sentence before we came, but no two were allowed to speak to any other two in the group. Two of them, I found, had been my neighbours in the Piombi at Venice.
We were conducted by the guards to the post assigned us, and then brought back after mass in the same manner, each couple into their former dungeon. A Capuchin friar came to celebrate mass; the good man ended every rite with a "let us pray" for "liberation from chains," and "to set the prisoner free," in a voice which trembled with emotion.
On leaving the altar he cast a pitying look on each of the three groups, and bowed his head sorrowfully in secret prayer.
CHAPTER LXXXI.
In 1825 Schiller was pronounced past his service from infirmity and old age; though put in guard over some other prisoners, not thought to require equal vigilance and care. It was a trying thing to part from him, and he felt it as well as we. Kral, a man not inferior to him in good disposition, was at first his successor. But he too was removed, and we had a jailer of a very harsh and distant manner, wholly devoid of emotion, though not intrinsically bad.
I felt grieved; Schiller, Kral, and Kubitzky, but in particular the two former, had attended us in our extreme sufferings with the affection of a father or a brother. Though incapable of violating their trust, they knew how to do their duty without harshness of any kind. If there were something hard in the forms, they took the sting out of them as much as possible by various ingenious traits and turns of a benevolent mind. I was sometimes angry at them, but they took all I said in good part. They wished us to feel that they had become attached to us; and they rejoiced when we expressed as much, and approved of anything they did.
From the time Schiller left us, he was frequently ill; and we inquired after him with a sort of filial anxiety. When he sufficiently recovered, he was in the habit of coming to walk under our windows; we hailed him, and he would look up with a melancholy smile, at the same time addressing the sentinels in a voice we could overhear: "Da sind meine Sohne! there are my sons."
Poor old man! how sorry I was to see him almost staggering along, with the weight of increasing infirmities, so near us, and without being enabled to offer him even my arm.
Sometimes he would sit down upon the grass, and read. They were the same books he had often lent