This was the second time that I saw him. Mazzini, who knev•.r of my stay in Rome, had wanted to make my acquaintance. One morning I \Wnt with L. Spinil" to spe him at Les Paqu is.
When we went in Mazzini was sitting dejectedly at the table listening to what was being said by a rather tall, graceful, handsome young man with fair hair. This was Garibaldi's bold companion-in-arms, the defender of Vascello, the leader of the Roman legionaries, Giacomo Medici. Another young man with an expression of melancholy preoccupation sat plunged in thought, paying no attention to what was going forward-this was Mazzini's colleague in the triumvirate, Marco Aurelio Saffi.I6
I a Spini, Leopold. an emigre who had taken part in the Italian movement for national liberation. (A.S.)
t r. Saffi was instructor in Italian lan�ua�e and literature at Oxford University from 1 853-60. ( A .S.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
366
Mazzini got up and, looking me straight in the face with his piercing eyes, held out both hands in a friendly way. Even in Italy a head so severely classical, so elegant in its gravity, is rarely to be met with. At moments the expression of his face was harshly austere, but it quickly grew soft and serene. An active, concentrated intelligence sparkled in his melancholy eyes; there was an infinity of persistence and strength of will in them and in the lines on his brow. All his features showed traces of long years of anxiety, of sleepless nights, of storms endured, of powerful passions, or rather of one powerful passion, and also some element of fanaticism-perhaps of asceticism.
Mazzini is very simple and amiable in his manner, but the habit of ruling is apparent, especially in argument; he can scarcely conceal his annoyance at contradiction, and sometimes he does not conceal it. He knows his strength, and genuinely despises all the external signs of a dictatorial setting. His popularitY was at that time immense. In his little room, with the everlasting cigar in his mouth, Mazzini at Geneva, like the Pope in the old days at Avignon, held in his hands the threads that like a spiritual telegraph system brought him into living communication with the whole peninsula. He knew every heartthrob of his party, felt the slightest tremor in it, promptly responded to everyone, and, with an indefatigability that was striking, gave gem•ral guidance to everything and everybody.
A fanatic and at the same time an organiser, he covered Italy with a network of secret societies connected together and devoted to one object. Tlwse societies branched off into arteries that defied detPction, split up, grew smaller and smaller, and vanished in the Apennines and the Alps, in the regal palazzi of aristocrats and the dark alleys of Italian towns into which no police can penetrate. Village -priests, diligence guards, the principi of Lombardy, smugglers, innkeepers, women, bandits, all
\vere made use of, all were links in the chain that was in contact with him and was subject to h im.
From the times of Menotti17 and the brothers Bandiera,1s 17 The 'Bolognese insurrection' lwgan on 2nd FE'bruary, 1 83 1 , at the house of Ciro i\fpnotti at Modcnil. There thirty-one conspirators surprised by the ducal troops held the soldiers at bay for hours. (Tr.) IH Attil io and Emilio Bandiera. two young Venetians, lieutenants in the Austrian navy, attempted an insurrection in 1 8-B. On i ts failure they escaped to Corfu; but, misled by false information, landed in Calabria with twenty companions, and wt>re caught and shot at Cosenza in July of the same year. ThPir letters to Mazzini in London had been opened by the English authorities, who then rPsealed them and sent the informa-
Paris-Italy-Paris
367
enthusiastic youths, vigorous men of the people, vigorous aristocrats, sometimes old men, have come forward in constant succession . . . and follow the lead of Mazzini, who had been consecrated by the elder Buonarrotti, the comrade and friend of Gracchus Babeu£,19 and advance to the unequal combat, disdainful of chains and the block, and sometimes at the point of death adding to the shout of 'Viva l'ltalia!' that of 'Evviva :1/a:;:;ini!'
There has never been such a revolutionary organisation anywhere, and it \vould hardly be possible anywhere but in Italy, unless in Spain. Now it has lost its former unity and its former strength ; it is exhausted by the ten years of martyrdom, it is dying from loss of blood and worn out with waiting; its ideas have aged ; and yet \vhat outbursts, what heroic examples, there are stilclass="underline"
Pianori, Orsini, Pisacane!
I do not think that by the death of one man a country could be raised from such decline as France has fallen into now.20
I do not seek to justify the plan on which Pisacane made his landing;21 it seemed to me as ill-timed as the two previous attempts at Milan: but that is not the point. I only mean to speak here of the way in which it was actually carried out.
These men overwhelm one with the grandeur of their tragic poetry, of their frightening strength, and silence all blame and criticism. I know no instance of greater heroism, among either the Greeks or the Romans, among the martyrs of Christianity or of the Reformation!
A handful of vigorous men sail to the luckless shore of Naples, serving as a challenge, an example, a living witness that all is not yet dead in the people. The handsome young leader is the first to fall, with the flag in his hand-and after him the rest fall, or worse still find themselves in the clutches of the Bourbon.
tion so gained to the Austrian gO\·ernment. Sir James Graham and Lord Aberdeen were principally responsible. ( Tr.)
19 Babeuf, Fran.;ois Noel, nicknamed Gracchus ( 1 760-9i), conspired against the Directoire, was condemned to death, but stabbed himself. He advocated a form of communism called babouvisme. ( Tr.) 20 The reference is to Orsini"s attempt to assassinate Napoleon III on 14th January, 1 858. ( Tr. )
21 'In 185 7 Pisacane seized the steamer Cagliari, freed the political prisoners on the island of Ponza, and with a small force effected a landing on the Neapolitan coast at Sapri, hoping to join others of the republican party: Met by 0\·en,·helming numbers, he fell at the head of his men, most of them falling with him.' ( Tr.)
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
368
The death of Pisacane and the death of Orsini were two fearful thunderclaps in a sultry night. Latin Europe shuddered--the wild boar,22 terrified, retreated to Caserta and hid himself in his lair.
Pale with horror, the man who was driving France in her funeral hearse to the graveyard swayed on the box.
The Italian refugees v\·ere not superior to the other refugees either in talent or education. The greater number of them knew nothing, indeed, but their own poets and their own history. But they were free from the stereotyped, commonplace stamp of the French rank and file democrats (who argue, declaim, exult and feel exactly the same thing in herds, and express their feelings in an identical manner) , as well as from the unpolished, coarse, pothouse, state-educated-seminarist character which distinguishes the German emigrants. The French democrat who comes by the dozen is a bourgeois in spe; the German revolutionary, like the German Bursch, is just the philistine over again, but at a different stage of development. The Italians are more original, more individual.