Part 18 (1/2)
Anita, the Recluse's inseparable companion, would not, even under these trying circ.u.mstances, leave him. In vain did her husband endeavor to persuade her to remain at San Marino. Though pregnant, faint, and sick, arguments were of no avail: the courageous woman would heed no advice, and answered all by smilingly asking ”if he wished to abandon her.”
Surrounded by the Austrian troops, tracked by the Papal police, that tired remnant of the Roman army outstripped them all during a night march, and arrived at the gates of Cesenatico at one o'clock in the morning, where an Austrian detachment kept guard.
”Fall on them and disarm them,” exclaimed Garibaldi to the few individuals forming his retinue; and the Austrian soldiers, completely stupefied, allowed themselves to be disarmed. The authorities were then awakened, and requested to supply food and _bragozzi_, or small barges, that the volunteers might embark.
It can not be denied that fortune has favored the Recluse in many arduous enterprises, but at this time began for him a series of adversities and misfortunes.
A northern cloud had spread itself over the Adriatic on this night, and breaking into wind, had rendered the sea furious. The narrow mouth of the port of Cesenatico was one ma.s.s of foam. Great were the efforts made to leave the port in the _bragozzi_, thirteen in number, weighed down as they were with people, and at day-break they succeeded. But at this crisis numerous Austrians entered Cesenatico.
Sail was made, for the wind had become favorable, and on the following morning four of the _bragozzi_, in one of which were Garibaldi and Anita, with Cicernachio, his two sons, and Ugo-Ba.s.si, landed in the Foci del Po. Anita, carried in the arms of the man of her heart, was borne to sh.o.r.e in a dying condition. The occupants of the other nine _bragozzi_ had given themselves up to the Austrian squadron, which had discovered the little crafts by the light of a full moon, and had rained bullets and grapeshot upon them until they surrendered.
The sh.o.r.es where the four boats put in were swarming with the enemy's explorers, sent to trace the fugitives. Anita was lying a little way off the sh.o.r.e, concealed in a corn-field, her head supported by the Recluse.
Leggiero, a valiant major belonging to the island of Maddalena, who had followed the General in South America, and returned to Italy with him, was their only companion. He lay peeping through the stalks, and very soon discovered some of the cursed white curs in search of blood.
Cicernachio, Ba.s.si, and nine others, who by our advice had taken a different direction in order to escape the enemy, were all captured, and shot like dogs by the Austrians.
When the nine victims were taken, the Austrians compelled nine peasants, by force of blows, to dig nine holes in the sand, after which a discharge from the enemy's picket dispatched the unhappy heroes. The youngest, a son of a Roman tribune, only thirteen years of age, still moved after the fire, but a blow from the b.u.t.t-end of an Austrian's musket smashed in his skull, and thus brutally ended his young life.
Ba.s.si and his brother, Cicernachio, met with the same fate at Bologna.
The foreigner and the priest made merry in that hour of slaughter over the purest Italian blood; and the mitred master of Rome remounted his polluted throne, having for a footstool the corpses of his compatriots.
Let this cold brutality, this savage butchery of their honest n.o.ble-hearted compatriots live in the memory of Italians, and give their consciences no peace while they leave their magnificent city a prey to the foreigner and to the vile priests, who use it as a den of infamy.
The Recluse, bearing his precious burden--that dear and faithful wife--wandered sadly, with his companion, Leggiero, through the lagoons of the lower Po, until he had closed her eyes, and wept over her cold corpse tears of desperation. Onward he wandered then, through forests and over mountains, ever pursued by the agents of the Pope and of Austria. Fate, however, spared him, to suffer anew both danger and fatigue, and to reap some triumphs too. The tyrants of Italy again found him upon their tracks--those tracks indelibly stained by them with tears and blood. Ill was it for them that he escaped until the day when they, in turn, took to flight, and, like cowards, left their tables spread for him, while the carpets of their superb palaces bore the imprint of the rough shoes of his Thousand.
Meanwhile, however, our tale has brought the Recluse to Venice to witness the liberty for which he had sighed so much. It was then that the lagunes, covered with gondolas, saluted the red s.h.i.+rt as the token of national redemption, and sad memories faded in the light of the joy and freedom of that Queen of the Adriatic.
CHAPTER LII. THE SPY IN VENICE
It is eleven o'clock at night. The ca.n.a.ls of Venice are covered with gondolas, and the Place of St. Mark, illuminated, is so crowded with people that scarcely a stone of the pavement is visible. From the balcony of the Zecchini Palace, on the north side of the Piazza, the Recluse has saluted the people, and the redeemed city (”redeemed,” yes, but by a bargain--the ancient bulwark of European civilization was, alas! bought and sold a bargain between courts), and that salutation was frantically responded to by an exulting and affected mult.i.tude. And above all was the beholder struck by the aspect of the populace, as he said to himself, ”The stigma which despotism imprints upon the human face can even be depicted here.”
A people, once the ancient rulers of the world, transformed by the foreigner and the priest, whose rod of deception, dipped in the chemistry of superst.i.tion, is able to change good into evil, gold to dross, and the most prosperous of nations into one of beggars and sacristans; these have bartered away this n.o.ble city of the sea, which calls herself ”daughter of Rome”--left her disheartened, dishonored, and defamed! And he who loved the people cried out in the anguish of his soul, ”Alas, that it should be so!”
But moved as he was by the contemplation of the scene, nevertheless he did not fail to cast a scrutinizing look over the buzzing crowd. After a life of sixty years, into which so many events had been crowded, the man of the people was not wanting in experience that enabled him to a.n.a.lyze fairly the component parts of a densely-packed crowd, among whom were hidden the thief, the a.s.sa.s.sin, the spy, and the hireling of the priest.
And many such were purposely mingled with the good and honest of that population.
While thoughtfully gazing, as we have said, upon the a.s.sembled people, a slight touch upon his shoulder made him aware of Attilio's presence.
”Do you see,” said the young Roman to him, ”that scoundrel's face, whose head is covered with a cap of the Venetian fas.h.i.+on, standing amongst those simple Venetian souls, but as easy to be distinguished as a viper amongst lizards, or a venomous tarantula amongst ants? When such reptiles wind about in a crowd, it is not without a motive; he is sent from Rome, and there is certainly something new in store for us. That follow is Cencio. I must look to him a little!”
Our readers will remember the subaltern agent of Cardinal Procorpio, for whom Gianni had rented a room in sight of Manlio's studio. After his employers had been hanged, he had been promoted to a higher office, that of princ.i.p.al agent to his Eminence Cardinal --------, the Pope's prime minister.
Cencio, once a Liberal, afterwards a traitor, had made profitable use of his knowledge of some of the democrats of Rome, and was, therefore, prized as a secret agent by the Cardinal's tribunal. We shall presently see what his mission to Venice had been. Meantime, in a saloon in the Zecchini Palace, closely filled with guests, amongst the brightest of the Venetian beauties, shone our three heroines, Irene, Julia, and Clelia.
The Venetian youths, accustomed to contemplate the charms of the daughters of the Queen of the Adriatic, were nevertheless astounded at the enchanting appearance of these three Roman ladies. We say three Romans, because Julia had by this time espoused her Muzio, and, although an affectionate daughter of her own dear native land, she was proud of her adopted country and called herself a Roman.
Irene was a little older than her companions, but had preserved so much freshness, that her extremely majestic carriage covered the difference of years, and she had so much the perfection of a matron about her, that she could well have served as a model to an artist wis.h.i.+ng to portray one of those grand Roman matrons of Cornelia's time. Marriage had not changed her younger and equally lovely companion; and the trio formed such an ornament to that drawing-room that the Venetian youths fluttered around them perfectly dazzled and amazed.