When he was about to sail for coal to Newcastle upon Tyne and was from there setting off to the Mediterranean, I told him how immensely I liked his seafaring life, and that of all the exiles he was the one who had chosen the better part.
'And who forbids them doing the same?' he replied with warmth. 'This was my cherished dream; you may laugh at it if you like, but I cherish it still. I am known in America: I could have three or four such ships under my command. I could take all the refugees on them: the sailors, the lieutenants, the workmen, the cooks, might all be exiles. What can they do now in Europe? Grow used to slavery and be false to themselves, or go begging in England. Settling in America is worsf' still-that's the end, that's the land of "forgetting one's country": it is a new fatherland, there are other interests, everything is different; men who stay in America fall out of the ranks. What is better than my idea? (his face beamed ) ; 'what could be better than gathering together round a few masts and sailing over the ocean, hardening ourselves in the rough life of sailors, in conflict with the elements and with danger? A floating revolution, ready to put in at any shore, independent and unassailable ! '
A t that moment he seemed to m e a hero of antiquity, a figure out of the Aeneid . . . who-had he lived in another agewould have had his legend, his 'Arma virumque canol'
Orsini was a man of quite a different sort. He gave proof of his 24 Anita Riveira de Silva, a beautiful creole, whom G. eloped with and then married. She was his companion on his earliest campaigns and bore him two sons and a daughter. She died in July 1 849. (R.)
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wild strength and terrific energy on the 1 4th of January, 1 858,25
in the Rue Lepelletier; they vmn him a great name in history, and brought his thirty-six-year-old head under the knife of the guillotine. I made his acquaintance at Nice in 1 851 ; at times we were even very intimate, then \'\'e drifted apart, came together again, and in the end 'a grey cat ran between us' in 1 856 and, though we were reconciled, we no longer felt the same towards each other.
Such personalities as Orsini developed only in Italy ; but to make up for this they appear there at all times and in all ages: they are conspirators and artists, martyrs and adventurers, patriots, condottieri, Teverinos26 and Rienzis,27 anything you like, but not vulgar, petty, commonplace, bourgeois. Such personalities stand out vividly in the chronicles of every Italian city. They amau us by their goodness, they amaze us by their wickedness ; they impress us by the strength of their passions and by the strength of their will. The yeast of restlessness is fermenting in them from early years-they must have danger, they must have laurels, glory, praise; they are purely Southern natures, with hot blood in their veins, with passions almost beyond our umiPrstanding, ready for any privation, for any sacrifice, from a sort of thirst for Pnjoyment. Self-denial and devotion in them go hand in hand with revengefulness and intolerance; i n much they are simple, and cunning in much. Reckless as to the means they use, they are reckless, too, of dangers; descendants of the Roman 'fathers of their country' and children in Christ of the Jesuit Fathers, reared on classical memories and the traditions of mediaeval turmoils, a mass of ancient virtues and catholic vices is fermenting in their souls. They set no value on their own l ives nor on the life of their neighbour, either; their terrific persistence is on a level with Anglo-Saxon obstinacy. On the one hand there is a naive love of the external, an amour propre bordering on vanity, on a voluptuous desire to drink their fill of power, applause and glory; on the other, all the Roman heroism in face of privation and death.
People with energy of this sort can only be halted by the guillotine ; otherwise, scarcely do they escape from the gendarmes of Sardinia before they begin hatching plots in the very claws of the Austrian hawk; and the day after a miraculous
�� The date of Orsini's a t tempt on the life of Napoleon I I I. ( A.S. )
�ll The hero of Georg<' Sand's no\'el of the same name. (A.S. )
�7 Rienzi, Cola di ( 1 3 1 3-5+), seized power in Rome in 1 3+7 and fought for the unification of Italy. He was unsuccessful and had to flee. (A.S.)
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rescue from the dungeons of Mantua they begin, with their arms still bruised from the leap to freedom, to sketch a plan with grenades; then, face to face with danger, they hurl them under a carriage. In the hour of failure they grow to colossal dimensions, and by their death deal a blow more powerful than a bursting grenade . . . .
As a young man Orsini had fallen into the hands of the secret police of Pope Gregory XVI; he \vas condemned for taking part in the movement in Rome and sentenced to the galleys, and remained in prison till the amnesty of Pius IX. From this life with smugglers, with bravoes, with survivors of the Carbonari, he gained a temper of iron and an immense knowledge of the national spirit. From these men, who were in constant, daily conflict with the society which oppressed them, he learnt the art of self-control, the art of being silent not only before a judge but even with his friends.
Men like Orsini have a powerful influence on others: people are attracted by their reserved nature and at the same time are not at home \�ith them; one looks at them with the nervous pleasure mingled with tremors with which one admires the graceful movements and velvety gambols of a panther. They are children, but wicked children. Not only is Dante's hell 'paved'
with them, but all the later centuries nurtured on his menacing poetry and the malignant wisdom of Machiavelli are full of them. Mazzini, too, belongs to their family, as did Cosimo de'
Me9ici, Orsini, and Giovanni Procida.28 One cannot even exclude from them the great 'adventurer of the sea,' Columbus, nor the greatest 'bandit' of recent ages, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Orsini was strikingly handsome; his whole appearance, elegant and graceful, could not but attract attention; he was quiet, spoke little, gesticulated less than his fellow-countrymen, and never raised his voice. The long black beard, as he \vore it in Italy, made him look like some young Etruscan priest. His whole head \vas unusually beautifuL only a little marred by the irregular line of the nose.29 And with all this there was something in Orsini's features, in his eyes, in his frequent smile and his gentle voice, that discouraged intimacy. It was evident that he was 28 Procida, G. (c. 1 22:5; d. after 1 299 ) , fought for the liberation of Sicily from France. (A.S.)
29 Napoleon, so the newspapers wrote. ordered Orsini"s head to be steeped in nitric acid that it mil!ht be impossible to take a death mask from it.
'Vhat progress in humanity and chemistry >ince the days when the head of John the Baptist was given on a golden dish to the daughter of Herod !
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