My Ten Years' Imprisonment/Chapter 7

CHAPTER VII.

To live at liberty is doubtless much better than living in a prison; but, even here, the reflection that God is present with us, that worldly joys are brief and fleeting, and that true happiness is to be sought in the conscience, not in external objects, can give a real zest to life. In less than one month I had made up my mind, I will not say perfectly, but in a tolerable degree, as to the part I should adopt. I saw that, being incapable of the mean action of obtaining impunity by procuring the destruction of others, the only prospect that lay before me was the scaffold, or long protracted captivity. It was necessary that I should prepare myself. I will live, I said to myself, so long as I shall be permitted, and when they take my life, I will do as the unfortunate have done before me; when arrived at the last moment, I can die. I endeavoured, as much as possible, not to complain, and to obtain every possible enjoyment of mind within my reach. The most customary was that of recalling the many advantages which had thrown a charm round my previous life; the best of fathers, of mothers, excellent brothers and sisters, many friends, a good education, and a taste for letters. Should I now refuse to be grateful to God for all these benefits, because He had pleased to visit me with misfortune? Sometimes, indeed, in recalling past scenes to mind, I was affected even to tears; but I soon recovered my courage and cheerfulness of heart.

At the commencement of my captivity I was fortunate enough to meet with a friend. It was neither the governor, nor any of his under- jailers, nor any of the lords of the process-chamber. Who then?--a poor deaf and dumb boy, five or six years old, the offspring of thieves, who had paid the penalty of the law. This wretched little orphan was supported by the police, with several other boys in the same condition of life. They all dwelt in a room opposite my own, and were only permitted to go out at certain hours to breathe a little air in the yard. Little deaf and dumb used to come under my window, smiled, and made his obeisance to me. I threw him a piece of bread; he took it, and gave a leap of joy, then ran to his companions, divided it, and returned to eat his own share under the window. The others gave me a wistful look from a distance, but ventured no nearer, while the deaf and dumb boy expressed a sympathy for me; not, I found, affected, out of mere selfishness. Sometimes he was at a loss what to do with the bread I gave him, and made signs that he had eaten enough, as also his companions. When he saw one of the under-jailers going into my room, he would give him what he had got from me, in order to restore it to me. Yet he continued to haunt my window, and seemed rejoiced whenever I deigned to notice him. One day the jailer permitted him to enter my prison, when he instantly ran to embrace my knees, actually uttering a cry of joy. I took him up in my arms, and he threw his little hands about my neck, and lavished on me the tenderest caresses. How much affection in his smile and manner! how eagerly I longed to have him to educate, raise him from his abject condition, and snatch him, perhaps, from utter ruin. I never even learnt his name; he did not himself know that he had one. He seemed always happy, and I never saw him weep except once, and that was on being beaten, I know not why, by the jailer. Strange that he should be thus happy in a receptacle of so much pain and sorrow; yet he was light-hearted as the son of a grandee. From him I learnt, at least, that the mind need not depend on situation, but may be rendered independent of external things. Govern the imagination, and we shall be well, wheresoever we happen to be placed. A day is soon over, and if at night we can retire to rest without actual pain and hunger, it little matters whether it be within the walls of a prison, or of a kind of building which they call a palace. Good reasoning this; but how are we to contrive so to govern the imagination? I began to try, and sometimes I thought I had succeeded to a miracle; but at others the enchantress triumphed, and I was unexpectedly astonished to find tears starting into my eyes. Le mie prigioni/Cap VII