you see how this iron reticulation of social rule and custom and force makes a scaffolding on which this tameless race build up their lives?  I watch them often.  Each country has its compensations.  Anselmo, this first made me tremble in my petty defiance,—­I, an ephemera of May, defying the dominations of eternity!—­Not so,—­not too lowly; I also am, and each limitation of life is as well, a domination of eternity.  But I saw that it was no purpose of God to have destroyed Italy; when men in weakness and wantonness suffered their liberties to be torn from them, suffered themselves to become enslaved, there was compensation in that their sons had chance for heroic growth; they might, in efforts for freedom, create virtues that, born to freedom, they would never have known.  I, too, had my field; I lost it; my enemy was myself.  But when I think of her—­Ay, there it is!  Do not let me think of her!  I become mad, when I think of her!—­At least, allow me this:  God’s ways are dark.  Not that?  Not even that?  I needed what I have?  If my ambitions, my passions, my will, had ruled, my soul would have remained null?  Ah, friend, and is that so much the worse?  It is the soul that aches!—­I am a man of the people, a man who acts,—­I was, I mean,—­not a man who thinks; and all your subtleties of word perchance entrap me.  I am not wary when you come to logic.  See!  I surrender point after point.  I shall be dead soon, you know; when this morning’s sun shave have set, when the moon shall hold the night in fee, I shall depart,—­wing up and away;—­is it, that, my body already dead, my mind sickens and dies with it, bit after bit, and so I yield, and attest, that, without the agony of my life, death had failed to burst my soul’s husk?  Oh, for I was born of an earthy race, blood ran thick in our veins, we were sensuous and passionate, the breath and steam of pleasure stifled our brains, and our filmy eyes could not see heaven.  Yes, yes, I needed it all; but, friend, it is pitiful.

* * * * *

I like to sit here in the sun.  It is only a twelvemonth, of all my long years’ imprisonment, that this has been allowed me.  I like to sleep in it, like any wild creature,—­the lizard, a mere reptile,—­the bird, a hindered soul.  To lie thus, weak as I am, but pillowed and warmed by the searching genial rays, seems such comfort, when I think of the bed I once had on the rack!  This little slumber from which I wake revives me.  I feared not to find you, and did not unclose my eyes at once.  It was good in you to come, Anselmo; it must have been at risk of much.

You ask me to speak of my life since I went away on that morning of your command,—­to reconcile the hostile acts, to gather the scattered reports.  Hear it all!

You know my wealth was equal to my demand.  I used it; before six months were over, I was the life and soul of those who must needs be conspirators.  They saw that I was earnest, that my sacrifices were real; they trusted me.  Soon the movement had become general; all the smothered elements of national life were convulsed and throbbing under the crust of tyranny.