Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century

Take, as an example, the Crimean war, where one hundred and fifty thousand men perished, while enormous treasures were swallowed up by the contest. The commencement of the quarrel was on account of the church named the Holy Sepulchre, and to decide whether a papistical or a Greek priest should take precedence there. This dispute was brought before the Emperors of France and Russia, and the result was war – England and Italy taking part in the enormous butchery consequent thereon.

England is at the present day in perpetual anxiety with regard to the state of Ireland, largely caused by the priests; and may God spare the world from an insurrection in the United States, where, in a population of thirty-three millions, nearly half are Roman Catholics, a large proportion of them Irish, who, under the dictatorship of a bishop, divide the country, and are always plotting for political supremacy.

In Venice the greater part of the population swore to follow General Garibaldi to the death, yet the day after the same crowd congregated in those shops where religious trinkets and "indulgences" in God's name are sold for money, and where idolatry in the guise of Christianity erects vain and lying images. Such are the Venetians, and such are they likely to remain under priestly superstition and political corruption.

With regard to representation, the great body of the Italian people are excluded from the elective franchise. Out of a population of more than twenty-five millions there are only four million five hundred thousand voters. Every voter must be twenty-five years of age, and must be able to read and write. As to the latter, the power of signing his name is deemed sufficient, but he must also contribute an annual sum of not less than forty francs, which must be paid in direct taxation to the state or province (the province answering to the English county); the municipal rates are not taken into account. Graduates of universities, members of learned societies, military and civil employés, either upon active service or half-pay, professional men, schoolmasters, notaries, solicitors, druggists, licensed veterinary surgeons, agents of change, and all persons living in a house, or having a shop, magazine, or workshop, are entitled to a vote, provided the rental is, in communes containing a population of less than two thousand five hundred inhabitants, two hundred francs; in communes containing a population of from two thousand five hundred to ten thousand inhabitants, three hundred francs; and in communes containing a population of over ten thousand inhabitants, four hundred francs.

But the power which the Government has of unduly influencing such of the voters as are not in its own immediate employ is enormous, by means of the chief officer in every town, called the syndic, who is appointed by the Government, and removable at its pleasure. This officer, under pain of dismissal, recommends to the voters for election any candidate that the Government desires to have elected, and lamentable as is the financial state of the country, millions of francs were placed at the disposal of the syndics for the purpose of corruption in the spring of the year 1867. If a town wants a branch railway to the main line, the election of the Government candidate will always insure the accomplishment of its wishes on this point.

The whole host of Government officials, including the police, actively interfere in aid of the ministerial candidate. Schoolmasters and others will be dismissed from their posts if they give a refractory vote; and workmen for the same reason are discharged. Official addresses have been known to be openly published, desiring the people not to vote for the opposition candidates; and there are instances of papers on the day of election being withheld from those voters who might prove to be too independent. Therefore it was with a view to reforming these abuses that General Garibaldi, in addressing the municipality of Palma, said, "Let the new Chambers be impressed with the necessity of reorganizing the administration, and if the Government, to tempt them, returns to its evil ways, then ill betide it." We do not intend following the General's steps as he proceeded from town to town, enthusiastically received by the multitude, who, joyous at the sight of the "man of the people," applauded his doctrine of non-submission to foreign dominion and humiliation, and above all echoed his plain denunciations of that clerical infamy and that immoral understanding which exists between the Papacy and those of the unworthy men who misgovern Italy.

As it may be supposed, the priests attacked the General, and accused him far and wide of being an atheist. This false and foolish charge led to his making the following address before twenty thousand people at Padua: -

"It is in vain that my enemies try to make me out an atheist. I believe in God. I am of the religion of Christ, not of the religion of the Popes. I do not admit any intermediary between God and man. Priests have merely thrust themselves in, in order to make a trade of religion. They are the enemies of true religion, liberty, and progress; they are the original cause of our slavery and degradation, and in order to subjugate the souls of Italians, they have called in foreigners to enchain their bodies. The foreigners we have expelled, now we must expel those mitred and tonsured traitors who summoned them. The people must be taught that it is not enough to have a free country, but that they must learn to exercise the rights and perform the duties of free men. Duty! duty! that is the word. Our people must learn their duties to their families, their duties to their country, their duties to humanity."

Garibaldi proceeded next to the university of Padua; and there, standing before the statue of Galileo, he uncovered his head, saying, "Who, remembering Galileo, his genius and his life, the torture inflicted upon him, the martyrdom he suffered – he, I say, who, remembering this, does not despise the priests of Rome, is not worthy to be called a man or an Italian."

The interests of commerce having always had a place in the heart of General Garibaldi, he delivered the following address to the Representatives of the Chambers of Commerce for Vicenza: – "Italy's future depends in great part on you. Our wars against the foreigners are, I hope, nearly at an end. Italy is united, is independent; you can make her prosperous. There is nothing necessary to the maintenance of the human race that we can not produce; and with such raw material as we have, what can we not manufacture? Our people have a mania for foreign goods; they like to wear foreign stuffs, to drink foreign wines, but let them once be persuaded that our own are as good, and they will be glad to adopt them; and foreign nations will receive our' merchandise, our manufactures, as eagerly as we now seek for theirs. But progress of every kind is difficult with the priests, and human brotherhood impossible."

CHAPTER LI. THE MEMORY OF THE DEAD

Let our tale revert to yet more distant memories, while the name of "Italy" wakes the author's recollections. He is set thinking of the sad times when newly-liberated Rome was again enchained by the hands of European despotism, alarmed at the revival of the Mistress of the World, and at the terrible warning conveyed by the Roman Republic. Alas! it was by the arms of another great Republic that her hopes were blighted. Napoleon, the secret enemy of all liberty, fleshed his weapons upon the Romans when he had committed the crime lesanazione, and betrayed the credulous people of Paris, slaying them in their streets without regard to age or sex. May God, in his own time, deal with the assassin of the 2d of December, and of the world's liberty!

After the defense of Rome, the Recluse, never despairing of the fete of Italy, although left with but few followers, decided to take the field. But more is required than a handful of brave men when nations intend to liberate themselves, and what can an irregular band of intrepid youths accomplish against four armies?

It is true that in the present day national spirit is more awakened, and the handful of brave youths has grown to heroic proportions and historical deeds, but in those unhappy times the populace stood gazing stupefied and in silence at the relics of the defenders of Rome while passing out on their way to the open country, regarding them as irretrievably lost. Not one of those men stood forward to increase our ranks. On the contrary, every morning discovered a quantity of arms upon the ground of bivouac, which deserters had abandoned. Those arms were placed upon the mules and wagons which accompanied the column, so that in time the column possessed more mules and wagons than men, and little by little the hope of arousing that nation of sluggards vanished from the souls of the faithful and courageous survivors.

At San Marino, seeing there was no longer any hope or heart to fight, the order of the day was given "to dismiss the men to their homes." That order was couched in the following terms: "Return to your homes, but remember that Italy must not remain a slave."

The larger number took the road to their dwellings, but some deserters from the Papal and Austrian troops, who, if taken prisoners would have been shot, remained to accompany their chief in his last attempt to free Venice.

And here begins a still sadder and more painful history.

Anita, the Recluse's inseparable companion, would not, even under these trying circumstances, 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 mass 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-Bassi, landed in the Foci del Po. Anita, carried in the arms of the man of her heart, was borne to shore 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 shores 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 shore, 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, Bassi, 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 butt-end of an Austrian's musket smashed in his skull, and thus brutally ended his young life. Bassi 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 noble-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 shirt 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 canals 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 multitude. 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 superstition, 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 noble 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 analyze fairly the component parts of a densely-packed crowd, among whom were hidden the thief, the assassin, 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 assembled 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 fashion, 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 principal 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 wishing 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.

By the side of Clelia were Manlio and the gentle Silvia. Of all our ladies only the Signora Aurelia was missing, and she had ended her unintentionally adventurous career by marrying the good-natured Captain Thompson, to whom she clung like the ivy to the oak; and although the sea was still a little repugnant to her, on account of that storm in which she had suffered so much, yet the billows had lost much of their terror, now her British sea-lion stood by her side to guard her.

Orazio and Muzio were standing together in a corner of the room talking over the events of the day, when Attilio, going up to them, made them acquainted with his discovery, and after some consultation they started off in company to the Piazza di San Marco. Not a few vain efforts did the three friends make to break through the crowd before they succeeded in at last reaching the object of their search, and whilst General Garibaldi, recalled by the people to the balcony, was again addressing the crowd, he saw his three young friends surround the fictitious Venetian. The iron hand of Orazio grasped the wrist of the agent like a vice, and Muzio, whose voice the scoundrel had formerly heard, fixing his glittering eyes upon him, said in a low tone, "Cencio, come with us."

The tool of the priests, the traitor of the meeting at the Baths of Caracalla, trembled from head to foot, his florid face became pale as that of a corpse, and, without articulating a word, he walked forward in the direction indicated by Muzio, between the other two Romans, who pushed him unresistingly on.

CHAPTER LIII. THE "GOVERNMENT"

When one thinks upon the hardly accomplished union of this our Italy, and of the rulers who have "led" her over the thorny path she has trodden, one can not but bow before the wisdom of Providence, who has uplifted her until she has constituted herself a nation.

Often in meditating upon this – our beautiful, grand, but unhappy native land – we in imagination have pictured her as a chariot drawn with patient toil by the generous portion of the people, having for device the "good of all," preceded by the star of Providence like a shining beacon, with the wicked host of rulers and their immense retinue following behind, disconcerted and fatigued, holding on to and endeavoring to draw back the vehicle of the State, even at the risk of destroying it in their efforts; while the people, impoverished, checked, and humiliated by that heavy rabble tugging in the rear, remain submissive and constant in their labors, clearing away the obstacles that cross their path towards redemption, and proceeding gradually forward without despairing of a future reparation. Reparation, indeed! From whom, my countrymen, do you expect reparation? From the re-assured professors of priestcraft, of Jesuitism, and of imposture, who have been restored to your towns and villages at the expense of your patrimony to maintain you in ignorance and in misery?

One of the many means of corruption employed by the powerful to render the populace slaves, is at the present day the "black division" – the priests. Kings who no longer believe in them have begun to use them to control the people, and keep them from justice, light, and liberty, in the name of "religion." This is the "reparation" which thou awaitest, popolo infelice! Reparation – and how shouldst thou demand or deserve it, who kneelest daily and hourly at the feet of a lying and chuckling priesthood?

In the mean time, however, one of the agents of this priesthood is walking, with his wicked head held down, in the grasp of Orazio and Attilio; Muzio going before to open the way through the multitude of people, and thus the four arrived finally at a tavern in the Vicola degli Schiavoni.

CHAPTER LIV. THE SENTENCE OF DEATH

"Let us pass quickly and on tiptoe that mass of corruption and slaughter called the Papacy," says Guerrazzi; or, to quote his own indignant Italian: "Passiamo presto, e sulla punta dei piedi, quel macchio di fimo e di sangue che si chiama Papato."

The Popes, who call themselves the vicegerents of Christ, slaughter men with chassepôts, play the executioner upon their political enemies, and instruct the world in the science of tortures, Inquisitions, autos-da fe, and murder. In former days many unhappy nations had the misfortune to suffer therefrom. Spain, for example, who has recently thrown off the yoke, for centuries groaned under the tortures of Rome. Even now the priest of Christ in the Vatican satiates his sanguinary vengeance in various ways, having recourse to the dagger, poison, brigandage, and murders of all kinds and degrees.

In the Roman tribunal the sentence of death had been long pronounced against Prince T – , the brother of our Irene; and Cencio, with eight cut-throats of the Holy See under his command, was under orders to take advantage of the tumult arising upon the arrival of Garibaldi in Venice to execute the atrocious decree. The eight accomplices of the spy had been posted in the immediate neighborhood of the Hôtel Victoria, in all the ways by which he could possibly arrive. Four were to hire a gondola and ply at the steps, with secret instructions to dispatch the gondoliers if necessary, that there might be no witness to lay the charge against them.