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Updated: June 12, 2025
"You belong," wrote Pellico to him, "you belong to those who to a generous disposition unite an intellect to see things wisely; never can I forget the gifts of genius and of courage developed in you in the days of misfortune." It was an auspicious sign of the times when the land which protected such an exile was represented by him in that of his nativity.
The scene changes, and I see myself locked in a narrow cell on the fifth floor, a jug of water at my side, a piece of black bread in my hand, with unkempt hair and unshorn chin, and the image of Silvio Pellico before me; condemned to ten days' imprisonment for having made an address of thanks to the professor of chemistry on the occasion of his closing lecture, thereby committing an infraction of article number so- and-so of the regulation forbidding any cadet to speak in public in the name of his companions.
Where is that Gil Blas gone? Eh? And that Silvio Pellico? And.... But why continue the list.... He knows. And hats. There are people who will exchange hats. Now that is unpardonable. That goes outside that dim borderland of conscience where honesty and dishonesty dissemble. No one can put a strange hat on without being aware of the fact. Yet it is done.
Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their families.
I cried, "who art thou? tell me thy name! I am Silvio Pellico." "Oh, Silvio!" cried my neighbour, "I know you not by person, but I have long loved you. Get up to your window, and let us speak to each other, in spite of the jailers." I crawled up as well as I could; he told me his name, and we exchanged few words of kindness.
Pellico and his companions were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called, from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi, when the events of 1821 gave rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests.
M. Fournier, a rich French merchant, settled at Leghorn, was an excellent musician, and carried this recreation of his leisure hours so far as to compose an opera, "Francesca di Rimini," the subject drawn from the romance of "Silvio Pellico." The wealthy merchant could find no manager who would venture to produce the work of an amateur.
When the singer ended, I called out, 'Bravo! He replied with a polite salutation, and asked me if I was French. "'No, I am Italian, and am called Silvio Pellico. "'The author of Francesca da Rimini? "'Yes, the same. "And now there followed a courtly compliment, with the usual regrets for my imprisonment. His compliments were brief and discriminating, and disclosed a finely cultivated mind.
On the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years' imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison in a bleak position in Moravia.
They were not, as some writers would have us believe, in a semi-barbarous condition. It can never be sufficiently told how well this venerable city deserves to be visited, and not in passing only. How the good and beautiful abound in it!” A little later, Pellico writes: “I continue to be quite delighted with Rome, both as regards men and things.
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