After a
tedious imprisonment, and repeated examinations in Milan, he was taken
to Venice, and lodged in the famous _piombi_, or cells in the roof of
the Ducal Palace. There, after long delays, he had his trial, and was
sentenced to twenty years in the prison of Spielberg. By a sort of
poetical license which the imperial clemency sometimes used, the
nights were counted as days, and the term was thus reduced to ten
years. Many other young and gifted Italians suffered at the same time;
most of them came to this country at the end of their long durance;
this Piedmontese poet returned to his own city of Turin, an old and
broken-spirited man, doubting of the political future, and half a
Jesuit in religion. He was devastated, and for once a cruel injustice
seemed to have accomplished its purpose.
Such is the grim outline of the story of Silvio Pellico. He was
arrested for no offense, save that he was an Italian and an
intellectual man; for no other offense he was condemned and suffered.
His famous book, "My Prisons", is the touching and forgiving record of
one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated.
Few have borne wrong with such Christlike meekness and charity as
Pellico. One cannot read his _Prigioni_ without doing homage to his
purity and goodness, and cannot turn to his other works without the
misgiving that the sole poem he has left the world is the story of
his most fatal and unmerited suffering.
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