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Updated: June 27, 2025
So reason might have told me in a calmer moment, but she was not allowed to make herself heard just then. I was young, I was angry, I chose to think I had been unfairly treated, and perhaps at my rival's instigation. It was not unlikely that Briga knew of my love for Donna Candida, and had encouraged her to use it in the good cause. Was she not always at his bidding?
"Colonel Alingdon," she said, "you have been a good friend of mine, though I think you have not liked me lately. But whether you like me or not, I know you will not deceive me. On your honor, do you think this memorandum may have been written later than the letter?" I hesitated. If she had cried out once against Briga I should have wished myself out of the business; but she was too sure of him.
I stood listening, fascinated by the rapidity and skill with which she had built up the hypothesis of Briga's defence. But before she ended a strange thing happened her argument had convinced me. It seemed to me quite likely that Briga had in fact been actuated by the motives she suggested. I suppose she read the admission in my face, for hers lit up victoriously. "You see?" she exclaimed.
Fernando Briga, then a lad of fifteen or sixteen, had attended his father in prison during Emilio Verna's last hours, and the latter, perhaps aware of the lad's liberal sympathies, had found an opportunity of giving him the letter. But why had Briga given it up to the warder? That was the puzzling question. The docket said: "Given by Doctor Briga's son" but it might mean "taken from."
We have found it conformable to his real interests, and to the present distribution of his troops. The heights of Briga are in truth the key to the Department of the Maritime Alps, since from there the high-road may be intercepted and we be obliged to evacuate Tende. We charge you to pay serious attention to this matter."
It was this Briga who attended Emilio Falco, and several of the other prisoners who were executed at the same time. Under shelter of his father's loyalty young Fernando conspired in safety. He was studying medicine, and every one supposed him to be absorbed in his work; but as a matter of fact he was fast ripening into one of Mazzini's ablest lieutenants.
She grew pale at that, and said it was enough to love a hero, even without hope of return; and as she said it she herself looked so heroic, so radiant, so unattainably the woman I wanted, that a sneer may have escaped me: was she so sure then that Briga was a hero? I remember her proud silence and our wretched parting.
I saw that her mind had flashed back to our last talk, and that she charged me with something too nearly true to be endurable. "My brother's letter? Given to the prison warder by Fernando Briga? My dear Captain Alingdon on what authority do you expect me to believe such a tale?" Her incredulity had in it an evident implication of bad faith, and I was stung to a quick reply.
I said just now that it was an unlucky day for me when I fell in love with Donna Candida; and no doubt you have guessed the reason. She was in love with some one else. It was the old situation of Heine's song. That other loved another loved Italy, and with an undivided passion. His name was Fernando Briga, and at that time he was one of the foremost liberals in Italy.
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