“Oh, they grew used to it, poor things!” he rejoined; “and they tried to keep up their courage for their father's sake, whose affairs did not admit of his leaving, and they would not go away without him. I remember being at the house one evening, when we heard screams in the street; we all ran to the window, and there was the servant of the Count ——, wringing his hands, and calling for help, over the prostrate body of his master, whose yells of agony mingled with the attendant's cries. Another time, one of them, walking with your uncle in broad daylight, saw a poor Irish friar shot dead at a few paces' distance. Ask them, too, if they remember that Easter Sunday, when, a little after dusk, they were startled by the report of fire-arms; and on sending to investigate the cause, their emissary returned, pale with horror, to say that he had stumbled over two dead bodies yet warm, lying before the Exchange, in the principal street of the town.”
“And all this time the local authorities never interfered?”
“Interfered! They were utterly powerless. Whether the assassins had a secret understanding with the Governor, or Preside, a certain Mattioli, a creature of Mazzini's, has never been ascertained. All I can vouch for is, that people repairing to him to implore justice on the murderers of their relations, found those murderers familiarly surrounding him in his audience chamber. The utmost lengths of severity he went to was one day to harangue his friends from the balcony of the Palazzo del Governo, and say, Figliuoli, state buoni; and another time to publish a manifesto, in which he deplored that 'the streets of Ancona were too often stained with the blood of citizens,' and begged them to 'place bounds to their patriotic ardour.'”
“But he put them down at last with a strong hand?”
“Not he! The order came from Rome; that respected demagogue had nothing to do with it. Towards the end of April, two envoys arrived from the Triumvirate, aroused at last to the magnitude of the evil, with private instructions to the preside to put an end to this overflowing patriotism in the most summary manner possible. The greatest caution was observed; the officers of the Guardia Civica, on whom the most reliance could be placed, were summoned and sworn to secrecy; then instructed as to what had been decided on. In the dead of the night, the tocsin sounded, the drums beat the générale, and different detachments of the civica marching to the haunts of the assassins, captured some twenty-five of them before they were well awake. Oh, there was such joy all over the town the next morning.”
“I can well imagine that,” said I; “but not how a population of thirty thousand people endured this bondage for three months without an effort at deliverance.”
“As for that,” he said, “I think, signorina, there are more wonderful examples in history of submission than even this affords. What is all I have been telling you to France under Robespierre?”
“And the siege—when did that begin?” I inquired.
“The siege,” he said—“let me see. It was in May—on the 24th of May—that the Austrians came in sight of the town, and summoned it to surrender. It was a mad idea that of holding out against them; still, I am glad it was attempted, and kept up, too, for twenty-eight days. Your cousins were safe, and away at that time, or I think even their English courage would have been sorely tried. And how the shells used to come hissing through the air, and then fall crashing down, as if the very skies were riven!... In due succession came the capitulation, and the entrance of the enemy, and the fall of Rome: and now behold us! Austrians here; French there; a despised and vindictive Government; a sullen people; an exhausted treasury; and foreign troops. We are in a bad way, signorina,” he continued, as he rose to take his departure; “and were it not for Piedmont and the Rè galantuomo, it would be useless to think of better times. A constitution, such as we see in that noble State, is the just medium between the ravings of the Mazzinians and the drivellings of the Codini. As long as we remain in the hands of the Pope, we shall never be more than a nation of buffoons, opera-dancers, singers, fiddlers, priests, and slaves!”