Three months passed,
and he had never seen the face of judge or accuser, though once the
prison inspector, with threats and promises, tried to entrap him into
a confession. One night his sleep was broken by a continued hammering;
in the morning half a score of his friends were hanged upon the
gallows which had been built outside his cell.
By this time his punishment had been so far mitigated that he had
been allowed a German grammar and dictionary, and for the first time
studied that language, on the literature of which he afterward
lectured in Florence. He had, like most of the young Venetians of his
day, hated the language, together with those who spoke it, until then.
At last, one morning at dawn, a few days after the execution of his
friends, Aleardi and others were thrust into carriages and driven to
the castle. There the roll of the prisoners was called; to several
names none answered, for those who had borne them were dead. Were the
survivors now to be shot, or sentenced to some prison in Bohemia or
Hungary? They grimly jested among themselves as to their fate. They
were marched out into the piazza, under the heavy rain, and there
these men who had not only not been tried for any crime, but had not
even been accused of any, received the grace of the imperial pardon.
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