My solitude, meantime, grew more oppressive. Two sons of the jailer, whom I had been in the habit of seeing at brief intervals, were sent to school, and I saw them no more. The mother and the sister, who had been accustomed, along with them, to speak to me, never came near me, except to bring my coffee. About the mother I cared very little; but the daughter, though rather plain, had something so pleasing and gentle, both in her words and looks, that I greatly felt the loss of them. Whenever she brought the coffee, and said, “It was I who made it,” I always thought it excellent: but when she observed, “This is my mother’s making,” it lost all its relish.
Being almost deprived of human society, I one day made acquaintance with some ants upon my window; I fed them; they went away, and ere long the placed was thronged with these little insects, as if come by invitation. A spider, too, had weaved a noble edifice upon my walls, and I often gave him a feast of gnats or flies, which were extremely annoying to me, and which he liked much better than I did. I got quite accustomed to the sight of him; he would run over my bed, and come and take the precious morsels out of my hand. Would to heaven these had been the only insects which visited my abode. It was still summer, and the gnats had begun to multiply to a prodigious and alarming extent. The previous winter had been remarkably mild, and after the prevalence of the March winds followed extreme heat. It is impossible to convey an idea of the insufferable oppression of the air in the place I occupied. Opposed directly to a noontide sun, under a leaden roof, and with a window looking on the roof of St. Mark, casting a tremendous reflection of the heat, I was nearly suffocated. I had never conceived an idea of a punishment so intolerable: add to which the clouds of gnats, which, spite of my utmost efforts, covered every article of furniture in the room, till even the walls and ceiling seemed alive with them; and I had some apprehension of being devoured alive. Their bites, moreover, were extremely painful, and when thus punctured from morning till night, only to undergo the same operation from day to day, and engaged the whole time in killing and slaying, some idea may be formed of the state both of my body and my mind.
I felt the full force of such a scourge, yet was unable to obtain a change of dungeon, till at length I was tempted to rid myself of my life, and had strong fears of running distracted. But, thanks be to God, these thoughts were not of long duration, and religion continued to sustain me. It taught me that man was born to suffer, and to suffer with courage: it taught me to experience a sort of pleasure in my troubles, to resist and to vanquish in the battle appointed me by Heaven. The more unhappy, I said to myself, my life may become, the less will I yield to my fate, even though I should be condemned in the morning of my life to the scaffold. Perhaps, without these preliminary and chastening trials, I might have met death in an unworthy manner. Do I know, moreover, that I possess those virtues and qualities which deserve prosperity; where and what are they? Then, seriously examining into my past conduct, I found too little good on which to pride myself; the chief part was a tissue of vanity, idolatry, and the mere exterior of virtue. Unworthy, therefore, as I am, let me suffer! If it be intended that men and gnats should destroy me, unjustly or otherwise, acknowledge in them the instruments of a divine justice, and be silent.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Does man stand in need of compulsion before he can be brought to humble himself with sincerity? to look upon himself as a sinner? Is it not too true that we in general dissipate our youth in vanity, and, instead of employing all our faculties in the acquisition of what is good, make them the instruments of our degradation? There are, doubtless, exceptions, but I confess they cannot apply to a wretched individual like myself. There is no merit in thus being dissatisfied with myself; when we see a lamp which emits more smoke than flame, it requires no great sincerity to say that it does not burn as it ought to do.
Yes, without any degradation, without any scruples of hypocrisy, and viewing myself with perfect tranquillity of mind, I perceived that I had merited the chastisement of my God. An internal monitor told me that such chastisements were, for one fault or other, amply merited; they assisted in winning me back to Him who is perfect, and whom every human being, as far as their limited powers will admit, are bound to imitate. By what right, while constrained to condemn myself for innumerable offences and forgetfulness towards God, could I complain, because some men appeared to me despicable, and others wicked? What if I were deprived of all worldly advantages, and was doomed to linger in prison, or to die a violent death? I sought to impress upon my mind reflections like these, at once just and applicable; and this done, I found it was necessary to be consistent, and that it could be effected in no other manner than by sanctifying the upright judgments of the Almighty, by loving them, and eradicating every wish at all opposed to them. The better to persevere in my intention, I determined, in future, carefully to revolve in my mind all my opinions, by committing them to writing. The difficulty was that the Commission, while permitting me to have the use of ink and paper, counted out the leaves, with an express prohibition that I should not destroy a single one, and reserving the power of examining in what manner I had employed them. To supply the want of paper, I had recourse to the simple stratagem of smoothing with a piece of glass a rude table which I had, and upon this I daily wrote my long meditations respecting the duties of mankind, and especially of those which applied to myself. It is no exaggeration to say that the hours so employed were sometimes delightful to me, notwithstanding the difficulty of breathing I experienced from the excessive heat, to say nothing of the bitterly painful wounds, small though they were, of those poisonous gnats. To defend myself from the countless numbers of these tormentors, I was compelled, in the midst of suffocation, to wrap my head and my legs in thick cloth, and not only write with gloves on, but to bandage my wrist to prevent the intruders creeping up my sleeves.
Meditations like mine assumed somewhat of a biographical character. I made out an account of all the good and the evil which had grown up with me from my earliest youth, discussing them within myself, attempting to resolve every doubt, and arranging, to the best of my power, the various kinds of knowledge I had acquired, and my ideas upon every subject. When the whole surface of the table was covered with my lucubrations, I perused and re-perused them, meditated on what I had already meditated, and, at length, resolved (however unwillingly) to scratch out all I had done with the glass, in order to have a clean superficies upon which to recommence my operations.
From that time I continued the narrative of my experience of good and evil, always relieved by digressions of every kind, by some analysis of this or that point, whether in metaphysics, morals, politics, or religion; and when the whole was complete, I again began to read, and re-read, and lastly, to scratch out. Being anxious to avoid every chance of interruption, or of impediment, to my repeating with the greatest possible freedom the facts I had recorded, and my opinions upon them, I took care to transpose and abbreviate the words in such a manner as to run no risk from the most inquisitorial visit. No search, however, was made, and no one was aware that I was spending my miserable prison-hours to so good a purpose. Whenever I heard the jailer or other person open the door I covered my little table with a cloth, and placed upon it the ink-stand, with the lawful quantity of state paper by its side.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Still I did not wholly neglect the paper put into my hands, and sometimes even devoted an entire day or night to writing. But here I only treated of literary matters. I composed at that time the Ester d’Engaddi, the Iginia d’Asti, and the Cantichi, entitled, Tanereda Rosilde, Eligi and Valafrido, Adello, besides several sketches of tragedies, and other productions, in the list of which was a poem upon the Lombard League, and another upon Christopher Columbus.