When
released, he gave himself up to devotion and works of charity. Perhaps
the humility, resignation, and submission of his book made it still
more mischievous to the Austrian Government. The reader's indignation
against those who could so trample on so unresisting a victim becomes
fierce.'
'If the Austrians,' I said, 'had been wise, they would have shot instead
of imprisoning them. Their deaths would have been forgotten--their
imprisonment has contributed much to the general odium which is
destroying the Austrian Empire.'
'It would have been wiser,' said Beaumont, 'but it would have been more
merciful, and therefore it was not done. But you talk of all these men as
solitarily imprisoned. Some of them had companions.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but they complained that one permanent companion was
worse than solitude. Gonfalonieri said, that one could not be in the same
room, with the same man, a year without hating him.
'One of the Neapolitan prisoners was chained for some time to a brigand.
Afterwards the brigand was replaced by a gentleman. He complained
bitterly of the change.
'The brigand,' said Minnie, 'was his slave, the gentleman had a will of
his own.
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