There is no crime, however foul, for which gold will not procure a pardon, both from church and state, in Italy; but Count Giulio was a beggar, without even one quattrino. Those who now possessed his villas and castles—having either purchased them in the days of his mad extravagance, or holding them from Mocenigo on his forfeiture—were loudest in his condemnation; although his hands were yet unstained by blood, and he had been the dupe of a beautiful but vicious woman and the unwitting tool of a desperate debauchee. In the solitude of the horrible piombi, he had ample time to reflect on the insanity of his career, and to repent: he wept for Diomida, and beat his head against his dungeon walls in the extremity of his agony. He endured all the pangs of remorse and self-reproach; and looking back to that proud eminence on which he had so lately stood, admired, honoured and beloved,—a position to which the talents of his high-born ancestors had raised him, and his then virtues entitled him,—Diomida, the gentle, the suffering, and beautiful, arose vividly before him, gashed by the dagger of Strazoldi. Then his reason tottered, and he longed for death to relieve him of his misery.
The new Doge Alviso Mocenigo, remembering an old grudge he bore Count Giulio, shewed now, in the plenitude of his power, the true Venetian spirit of revenge: he cast him into one of those dreadful cells under the roof of the palace of St. Mark—the worst of the piombi or leaden dungeons—where the wretched prisoners, stripped to the skin, are chained to the pavement, and exposed to the burning rays of a hot Italian sun concentrated in a focus, until their brains boil and they become raving maniacs.
During the heat of a scorching summer, the unhappy della Torre experienced these frightful torments in their utmost extreme, till he found relief in furious madness. The stern Doge Alviso, insatiate in his thirst for revenge, consigned his fallen foe to the galleys of the Maltese knights, where the flaying rod of the task-master restored him to his senses and the pangs of reflection and remorse.
Recollection slowly returned, and the once noble Giulio della Torre, who had been chained to the oar a crazed maniac, became in time a hardened villain, lost to everything but a craving for vengeance on Mocenigo; which, happily, was never gratified. The bandits, bravoes, and other murderous villains, with whom he was compelled to associate, applauded, pitied, and encouraged him by turns: or affected to do so; but the meanest citizen of Venice would not have glanced at him on the highway. Mocenigo died; and for ten long years Giulio tugged at the oar: but the thirst for revenge never passed away. The galley was wrecked on the rocks of Alfieri on the Calabrian coast; he escaped, and turned robber. From a robber he became a hermit, secluded in the wild woods, and dwelt in the habitation which you now behold.
Know that I am he of whom I have spoken: once Giulio Count della Torre di Fana; but prouder of the humble title of Il Padre Eremito of the Tomb! Here have I dwelt for sixty long, weary, and monotonous, though peaceful years. Time seemed to stand still, and death appeared to have forgotten me. Until three days ago, when first I felt his cold hand upon my heart, I feared that, like the wandering Apostle of the Scripture, I was to live on undying, until that last dreadful day when the heavens and the earth, the dead and the living, shall come together.
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Such was the story related to me by this singular being, omitting the frequent outbursts and exclamations of horror, grief, remorse, and exhaustion with which its course was often interrupted. The dying man now finally paused, overcome with exertion and the intensity of his emotions.
After many pious ejaculations and muttered prayers, his strength gradually became weaker, his voice more faint, and utterly exhausted by his long confession, he sank into that dull lethargy so often the forerunner of death. Rolled up in my cloak I sat beside him, watching the ebb of decaying nature, and pondering on the peculiarity of my situation and this strange tale of other days. I seemed still to hear the querulous tones of his feeble voice long after his lips had ceased to move; but at last, overcome with the toil of the previous day and night, I could no longer resist the weariness that oppressed me, and sank into a deep sleep.
When I awoke, the morning sun streamed brightly through the ruined window of the tomb, and its yellow light, piercing through the gloom, fell with celestial radiance on the bushy beard, attenuated form, and rigid features of the old recluse. The clasped hands, the fixed eyes, and relaxed jaw informed me that his spirit had fled, and I reproached myself bitterly fur having been so forgetful as to sleep and permit the poor old man to die unwatched. I stirred him, but he felt no more: I laid my hand on his heart, but its pulses were still. How many millions of his contemporaries had been consigned to the tomb, where perchance even their bones could not now be found, while he had lingered on—an animated mummy withered in heart and crushed in spirit!
I now departed, obliged to leave to fate the chance of the hermit's remains obtaining the rites of sepulture. The idea troubled me but little at that time: when campaigning, unburied bodies are no more thought of than dead leaves by the way-side. But I learned afterwards that, by order of Petronio, Bishop of Cosenza, the old hermit was interred with great ceremony in the ancient tomb; which was converted into an oratory, where the prayers of the passers-by might be offered up for the repose of his soul. The gown and rosary of the hermit may yet be seen there by any one who is curious in these matters.