They found out their error later, but when too
late to repair it, and from 1820 until 1859 in Milan, and until 1866
in Venice, the hatred, which they had themselves enkindled, burned
fiercer and fiercer against them. It is not extravagant to say that
if their rule had continued a hundred years longer the Italians would
never have been reconciled to it. Society took the form of habitual
and implacable defiance to them. The life of the whole people might be
said to have resolved itself into a protest against their presence.
This hatred was the heritage of children from their parents, the bond
between friends, the basis of social faith; it was a thread even in
the tie between lovers; it was so intense and so pervasive that it
cannot be spoken.
Berchet was the vividest, if not the earliest, expression of it in
literature, and the following poem, which I have already mentioned,
is, therefore, not only intensely true to Italian feeling, but
entirely realistic in its truth to a common fact.
REMORSE.
Alone in the midst of the throng,
'Mid the lights and the splendor alone,
Her eyes, dropped for shame of her wrong,
She lifts not to eyes she has known:
Around her the whirl and the stir
Of the light-footing dancers she hears;
None seeks her; no whisper for her
Of the gracious words filling her ears.
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