"The Venetian girl is astonished that some one should have had the courage to write against her two scenes of a novel built up and filled with impious falsehoods. She complains bitterly of the author, who might have made use of another person to give scope to his talent and not made a plaything of an honest young woman of education and religion, known to all and universally loved and esteemed.

"How can Silvio say that, at my age of 13 years (which was my age at the time when he says that he knew me), how can he say that I used to go daily to see him in his abode, when I swear that I went there only a very few times and always accompanied by my father, mother, or brother? How can he say that I confided a love to him, when I was always at my classes, and when I had hardly begun to know anything, and could know nothing of love or the world, being devoted only to the duties of religion, to those of a dutiful daughter, and occupied with my studies, which were my only pleasures? I swear that I never spoke to him of love, nor of anything else whatsoever. Only, if sometimes I saw him, I looked upon him with eyes of pity, because my heart was full of compassion for my fellow-creatures, and I hated the place in which my father by ill-chance found himself: he had always occupied another position; but, after being a brave soldier and well serving the Republic and, afterwards, his Sovereign, he was given this employment against his will and that of his family.

"It is most false (falsissimo) to say that I ever took the hand of the aforesaid Silvio, either as a father's or a brother's; first, because, although very young and without experience, I had had enough education to know my duties. How can he say that I kissed him, I who would not have done that even to a brother: so great were the scruples imprinted in my heart by the education which I had received in the convents, where my father had always kept me?

The manuscript translated.

"Truly he must have known me more thoroughly than I could know him! I remained daily in the company of my brothers in a room next to his own, which was the place where my aforesaid brothers slept and studied: now, since I was free to remain with them, how can he say that I talked to him of the affairs of my family, that I relieved my heart about my mother's severity and my father's kindness, when I had no motive whatever to complain of the former, but always loved her?

"And how can he say that he shouted at me for bringing him bad coffee? I know of no one who can say that he dared to shout at me, all having shown their esteem for me by their kindness alone.

"It is a thousand wonders to me that a man of spirit and talent should have dared unjustly to boast of such things against an honest girl, which might make her lose the esteem which all profess for her, not to say the love of a respectable husband and her peace and tranquillity in the arms of her family and her daughter.

"I am immeasurably indignant with this author for exposing me in this way in a public book and for taking so great a liberty as to mention my name every moment.

"And yet he took care to put the name of Tremerello in place of that of Mandricardo, which is the name of him who so well carried his messages. And this one I could have made known to him for certain, because I knew how unfaithful he was to him and how much interested: for the sake of eating and drinking, he would have sacrificed any-body; he was perfidious towards all those who, to their misfortune, came to him poor and were unable to make him eat as much as he liked: he treated those unfortunates worse than beasts. But, when I saw him, I reproached him and told my father, my heart not being able to endure such treatment of my fellow-creatures. He was good only to those who gave him una buona mancia[230] and gave him plenty to eat: Heaven forgive him! But he will have to account for his evil actions towards his fellow-creatures and for the hatred which he bore me because of the remonstrances which I made him. For so wicked a man Silvio showed a regard, and for me, who did not deserve to be exposed, he did not show the slightest regard.

"But I shall surely know where to go to find real justice, for I will not, nor do I intend to be mentioned in public.

"I am happy in the arms of a husband who loves me so well and who is truly and virtuously repaid, well-knowing not only my conduct but my sentiments: and then, because of a man who thinks fit to exploit me in the interest of his ill-founded writings, which are full of falsehoods...!

"Silvio will forgive my anger: but he must surely have expected it when I came clearly to realize his conduct towards me.

"This is the reward for all that my family has done, having treated him with the humanity which every creature deserves that has fallen into such misfortune, and not having treated him according to orders.

"I however take oath that all that has been said in respect of me is false. Perhaps Silvio was misinformed about me; but he cannot say such things, which are untrue, in order to tell the truth, but only to have a stronger motive on which to base his novel.

"I should like to say more; but the occupations of my family do not permit me to waste more time. Only I thank Signor Silvio for his work and for having punished me, who am innocent of guilt, by filling my breast with constant disquiet and perhaps with perpetual unhappiness."

This literal translation is far from rendering the feminine animation, the foreign grace, the spirited simplicity of the text; the dialect which Zanze employs exhales a raciness of the soil which it is impossible to transfuse into another language. The apologia, with its incorrect, nebulous, unfinished phrases, like the vague extremities of a group by Albani[231]; the manuscript, with its defective or Venetian spelling, is like a Greek woman's monument, but of those women of the time when the Bishops of Thessaly[232] sang the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea. I prefer the two pages of the little gaoler's daughter to all the dialogues of the great Isotta[233], although she pleaded for Eve against Adam as Zanze pleads for herself against Pellico. My fair Provençal country-women of other days still more recall the daughter of Venice by the idiom of those intermediary generations, among which the language of the vanquished is not yet entirely dead and the language of the victor not yet entirely formed.

Zanze v. Pellico.

Which is in the right: Pellico or Zanze? What is the matter in dispute? A simple confidence, a doubtful kiss, which, in effect, was perhaps not meant for him who received it. The angry bride refuses to recognise herself in the delicious growing child pictured by the captive; but she contests the fact with so much charm that she proves it while denying it. The portrait of Zanze in the plaintiffs memorial is so like that we find it again in the defendant's rejoinder: the same sentiment of religion and humanity, the same reserve, the same note of mystery, the same soft and tender unconstraint.

Zanze is full of power when she avers, with passionate candour, that she would not have dared to kiss her own brother, much less M. Pellico. Zanze's filial piety is extremely touching, when it transforms Brollo into an old soldier of the Republic, reduced to the gaoler's state per sola combinazione.

Zanze is quite admirable when she makes this observation: Pellico concealed the name of an unprincipled man and was not afraid to reveal that of an innocent creature who showed compassion for the sufferings of the prisoners.

Zanze is not enticed by the idea of being immortal in an immortal work; that idea does not even occur to her mind: she is struck only by a man's indiscretion; that man, if we are to believe the person offended, sacrifices a woman's reputation to the sports of his talent without giving a care to the harm that he may cause, thinking only of writing a novel to benefit his reputation. A visible dread governs Zanze: will not a prisoner's revelations rouse a husband's jealousy?

The outburst that ends the apologia is pathetic and eloquent:

"I thank Signor Silvio for his work and for having punished me, who am innocent of guilt, by filling my breast with constant disquiet and perhaps with perpetual unhappiness: una continua inquietudine e forse una perpetua infelicità."

On these last lines, written with a tired hand, the trace of a few tears is visible. I, no party to the trial, wish to lose nothing. I therefore hold that the Zanze of Mie Prigioni is the Zanze according to the Muses and that the Zanze of the apologia is the Zanze according to history. I wipe out the little defect of figure which I thought that I had seen in the daughter of the old soldier of the Republic; I was mistaken: the Angelica of Silvio's prison is shaped like the stem of a rush, like the trunk of a palm-tree. I declare to her that no person in my Memoirs pleases me so much as she, not excepting my sylph. Between Pellico and Zanze herself, with the aid of the manuscript of which I am the depositary, it will be a great wonder if the Veneziana does not go down to posterity! Yes, Zanze, you will take your place among the shades of women that spring up around the poet, when he dreams to the sound of his lyre. Those delicate shades, orphans of an expired harmony and a vanished dream, remain alive between earth and Heaven and inhabit at one time their two-fold country: