unceasing effort: in other words, to permit no one thought which should not be inspired by a wish to conform my whole life to the decrees of God.
The forms I adopted were simple and few; not from contempt of them (I think them very salutary, and calculated to excite attention), but from the circumstance of my being unable to go through them at length, without becoming so far abstracted as to make me forget the solemn duty in which I am engaged. This habitual observance of prayer, and the reflection that God is omnipresent as well as omnipotent in His power to save, began ere long to deprive solitude of its horrors, and I often repeated, “Have I not the best society man can have?” and from this period I grew more cheerful, I even sang and whistled in the new joy of my heart. And why lament my captivity? Might not a sudden fever have carried me off? and would my friends then have grieved less over my fate than now? and cannot God sustain them even as He could under a more trying dispensation? And often did I offer up my prayers and fervent hopes that my dear parents might feel, as I myself felt, resigned to my lot; but tears frequently mingled with sweet recollections of home. With all this, my faith in God remained undisturbed, and I was not disappointed.
CHAPTER VII.
To live at liberty is doubtless much better than living in a prison; but, even here, the reflection that God is present with us, that worldly joys are brief and fleeting, and that true happiness is to be sought in the conscience, not in external objects, can give a real zest to life. In less than one month I had made up my mind, I will not say perfectly, but in a tolerable degree, as to the part I should adopt. I saw that, being incapable of the mean action of obtaining impunity by procuring the destruction of others, the only prospect that lay before me was the scaffold, or long protracted captivity. It was necessary that I should prepare myself. I will live, I said to myself, so long as I shall be permitted, and when they take my life, I will do as the unfortunate have done before me; when arrived at the last moment, I can die. I endeavoured, as much as possible, not to complain, and to obtain every possible enjoyment of mind within my reach. The most customary was that of recalling the many advantages which had thrown a charm round my previous life; the best of fathers, of mothers, excellent brothers and sisters, many friends, a good education, and a taste for letters. Should I now refuse to be grateful to God for all these benefits, because He had pleased to visit me with misfortune? Sometimes, indeed, in recalling past scenes to mind, I was affected even to tears; but I soon recovered my courage and cheerfulness of heart.
At the commencement of my captivity I was fortunate enough to meet with a friend. It was neither the governor, nor any of his under-jailers, nor any of the lords of the process-chamber. Who then?—a poor deaf and dumb boy, five or six years old, the offspring of thieves, who had paid the penalty of the law. This wretched little orphan was supported by the police, with several other boys in the same condition of life. They all dwelt in a room opposite my own, and were only permitted to go out at certain hours to breathe a little air in the yard. Little deaf and dumb used to come under my window, smiled, and made his obeisance to me. I threw him a piece of bread; he took it, and gave a leap of joy, then ran to his companions, divided it, and returned to eat his own share under the window. The others gave me a wistful look from a distance, but ventured no nearer, while the deaf and dumb boy expressed a sympathy for me; not, I found, affected, out of mere selfishness. Sometimes he was at a loss what to do with the bread I gave him, and made signs that he had eaten enough, as also his companions. When he saw one of the under-jailers going into my room, he would give him what he had got from me, in order to restore it to me. Yet he continued to haunt my window, and seemed rejoiced whenever I deigned to notice him. One day the jailer permitted him to enter my prison, when he instantly ran to embrace my knees, actually uttering a cry of joy. I took him up in my arms, and he threw his little hands about my neck, and lavished on me the tenderest caresses. How much affection in his smile and manner! how eagerly I longed to have him to educate, raise him from his abject condition, and snatch him, perhaps, from utter ruin. I never even learnt his name; he did not himself know that he had one. He seemed always happy, and I never saw him weep except once, and that was on being beaten, I know not why, by the jailer. Strange that he should be thus happy in a receptacle of so much pain and sorrow; yet he was light-hearted as the son of a grandee. From him I learnt, at least, that the mind need not depend on situation, but may be rendered independent of external things. Govern the imagination, and we shall be well, wheresoever we happen to be placed. A day is soon over, and if at night we can retire to rest without actual pain and hunger, it little matters whether it be within the walls of a prison, or of a kind of building which they call a palace. Good reasoning this; but how are we to contrive so to govern the imagination? I began to try, and sometimes I thought I had succeeded to a miracle; but at others the enchantress triumphed, and I was unexpectedly astonished to find tears starting into my eyes.
CHAPTER VIII.
I am so far fortunate, I often said, that they have given me a dungeon on the ground floor, near the court, where that dear boy comes within a few steps of me, to converse in our own mute language. We made immense progress in it; we expressed a thousand various feelings I had no idea we could do, by the natural expressions of the eye, the gesture, and the whole countenance. Wonderful human intelligence! How graceful were his motions! how beautiful his smile! how quickly he corrected whatever expression I saw of his that seemed to displease me! How well he understands I love him, when he plays with any of his companions! Standing only at my window to observe him, it seemed as if I possessed a kind of influence over his mind, favourable to his education. By dint of repeating the mutual exercise of signs, we should be enabled to perfect the communication of our ideas. The more instruction he gets, the more gentle and kind he becomes, the more he will be attached to me. To him I shall be the genius of reason and of good; he will learn to confide his sorrows to me, his pleasures, all he feels and wishes; I will console, elevate, and direct him in his whole conduct. It may be that this my lot may be protracted from month to month, even till I grow grey in my captivity. Perhaps this little child may continue to grow under my eye, and become one in the service of this large family of pain, and grief, and calamity. With such a disposition as he has already shown, what would become of him? Alas; he would at most be made only a good under-keeper, or fill some similar place. Yet I shall surely have conferred on him some benefit if I can succeed in giving him a desire to do kind offices to the good and to himself, and to nourish sentiments of habitual benevolence. This soliloquy was very natural in my situation; I was always fond of children, and the office of an instructor appeared to me a sublime duty. For a few years I had acted in that capacity with Giacomo and Giulio Porro, two young men of noble promise, whom I loved, and shall continue to love as if they were my own sons. Often while in prison were my thoughts busied with them; and how it grieved me not to be enabled to complete their education. I sincerely prayed that they might meet with a new master, who would be as much attached to them as I had been.
At times I could not help exclaiming to myself, What a strange burlesque is all this! instead of two noble youths, rich in all that nature and fortune can endow them with, here I have a pupil, poor little fellow! deaf, dumb, a castaway; the son of a robber, who at most can aspire only to the rank of an under-jailer, and which, in a little less softened phraseology, would mean to say a sbirro. [2] This reflection confused and disquieted me; yet hardly did I hear the strillo [3] of my little dummy than I felt my heart grow warm again, just as a father when he hears the voice of a son. I lost all anxiety about his mean estate. It is no fault of his if he be lopped of Nature’s fairest proportions, and was born the son of a robber. A humane, generous heart, in an age of innocence, is always respectable. I looked on him, therefore, from day to day with increased affection, and was more than ever desirous of cultivating his good qualities, and his growing intelligence. Nay, perhaps we might both live to get out of prison, when I would establish him in the college for the deaf and dumb, and thus open for him a path more fortunate
