IMPRISONMENT AT MILAN.

On Friday, the 13th of October, 1820, I was arrested at Milan, and conducted to Santa Margherita formerly a convent, and now the head office of the extensive police establishment. It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, and, after an examination, I was consigned to the charge of the jailer, who having conducted me to the apartment destined for me, politely invited me to deliver into his hands, to be restored at the fitting time, my watch, purse, and any thing else I might have in my pockets; which, having obtained, he with some ceremony wished me good evening.

In less than half an hour my dinner arrived; I ate a few mouthfuls, drank a glass of water, and was left alone. My room was on the ground, and opened on a court-yard, with cells. all around, cells on the right and on the left, opposite and above me. I leaned against the window, and stood some time listening to the tramp of the jailers as they went to and fro, and to the dissolute songs of some of the pris

oners.

I fell into reflection: a century ago, this prison was a nunnery. Could the holy penitents who inhabited it have ever believed that a day would come when their chambers would

resound no longer with the prayers and lamentations of devout women, but with blasphemies and detestable ribaldry, and would hold within them the refuse of society-wretches destined to the hulks or the gallows? And in another century who will breathe in these cells? Alas for the swiftness of time, and the instability of things! Should any one complain that fortune ceases to smile upon him, or grieve that he is cast into a prison and threatened with the gibbet? But yesterday I was one of the happiest of men; to-day I have lost every thing that conduced to the joy of my existenceliberty, friends, hope! It would be absurd to delude myself. I leave this place only for a dungeon more horrible, or for the hands of the executioner. Be it so. When I am dead, it will signify little whether I yielded my last sigh in a dungeon, or am borne to the tomb in all the grandeur of funereal pomp.

It was thus my mind found strength in thinking of the inexorable sweep of time; but shortly the remembrance of my father, my mother, my sisters, my brothers, and of a family which I loved as tenderly as if it were my own, came to assail me, and the arguments of philosophy were powerless. Tenderer thoughts came over me, and I wept like a child.

During the night I slept a little. I became

gradually resigned to my unhappy fate. Toward morning my agitation was calmed, and I was astonished at the change. I yet thought upon my parents, and upon all those whom I loved; but I no longer despaired of their strength of mind. The recollection of those virtuous sentiments which I had known sustain them in previous calamities, consoled me on their behalf.

In the course of the day which followed I was again called to an examination; and it was renewed during several successive days, without any other interval than that allowed for my meals.

While the process thus continued, the days passed rapidly, owing to the constant exercise in which my mind was kept, from the necessity of answering, without intermission, the most varied questions, and of collecting my energies during the intervals of the examination in recalling all that had been asked of me, what answers I had given, and in reflecting upon all those things upon which I would probably be next interrogated.

At the end of the first week a most cruel misfortune happened to me. My poor friend Piero, equally eager with myself to establish a communication between us, wrote me a letter, and sent it, not by a secondino-officer of the prison-but by an unfortunate prisoner who was

employed in performing services in our rooms. He was a man of from sixty to seventy years of age, condemned to I know not how many months of imprisonment. With a needle which I had, I pricked my finger and wrote a few lines in reply with my blood, which I gave to the mesinger. He had the misfortune to be observed, was seized with the note upon him, and, if I am not mistaken, scourged. I heard frightful cries, which struck me as coming from the poor old man. I never saw him afterward.

Called to the bar, I shuddered at having presented to me my little letter covered with blood, although, thanks to Heaven, it contained no dangerous matter, for there were only a few words of friendly salutation. I was asked with what I had drawn blood. The needle was taken from me, and the ruffians laughed in derision. But I could not laugh! I could not forget the countenance of the old messenger. I would willingly have suffered any punishment to have procured his pardon; and when I heard those cries, which I believed were his, my heart was dissolved in tears.

It was in vain that I repeatedly asked the jailer and his secondino after him. They shook their heads, and said, "He has paid dearly for his fault; he will not do the like again; he is now somewhat more quiet." And they refused

to give any further explanation. Did they refer by that to the narrow prison in which the wretched man was confined, or did they mean that he had died under the blows inflicted upon. him, or from the consequences of those blows?

One day I thought I saw him beyond the court-yard beneath the portico with a load of wood upon his shoulders, and my heart beat as if I had seen a brother. When I had no longer to undergo the torment of answering interrogatories, and there was nothing to occupy the day, I found in all its bitterness the weight of solitude.

I was allowed to have a Bible and a copy of Dante; the jailer placed his whole library at my disposition, which contained some romances by Scuderi, Piazzi, and others worse than they; but my mind was too agitated to devote itself to reading any thing. I got by heart every day a canto of Dante; but this exercise was so mechanical, that, in pursuing it, I thought less of the verses than of my misfortunes. It was the same when I read any other thing, except at certain passages of the Bible, which deeply affected my feelings, and inspired me with fortitude and resignation. To live free is a thing infinitely more pleasant than to live in prison; and yet even in the gloom of a prison, when one reflects that God is present, that the joys