Meanwhile the unrelenting Agostino was fixed in his purpose and incessant in his machinations. He believed that the destructive mine was now sufficiently prepared, and that he might proceed in all surety to the ultimate explosion. He apprehended that he had advanced too far to retract, that the death of Charon and the assault upon Hector were calculated sufficiently to announce what was to follow, and that it would be injudicious and idle to grant me much respite for reflection. The passions of his associates were wrought up to a frenzy of horror, and needed Implicitly as I had confided in the decision of the marchese, I had speedily reason to know that it was the dictate of too sanguine and presumptuous a spirit. On my return from his palace, and, on several subsequent occasions, I found the manners of the populace altered respecting me. They no longer viewed me with a sort of reverential awe, or fled my approach. They insulted me with their eyes, they muttered curses upon me in a voice sufficiently audible to be understood, they broke forth in gestures of abhorrence and derision. They regarded me with looks of ferocious hatred; and when I had passed them, their murmurs gradually swelled into shouts of triumphant contumely. These symptoms however were progressive; each day became more odious and intolerable than the last. They who have never been placed in a situation like mine, will never be able to do justice to my grievance. They will perhaps say, that the calamity I now endured was a trifling one, and that a weak mind only can be elevated by the acclamations and huzzas of the multitude, or depressed by their hisses and scorn. I did not, and I could not, feel it so. There is no pleasure more congenial to the human heart, than the approbation and affection of our fellows. I call heaven to witness that I could mount the scaffold, surrounded with an innumerable multitude to applaud my fortitude, and to feel as it were on their own neck the blow that ended me, and count it a festival. But I cannot bear to be surrounded with tokens of abhorrence and scorn. I cannot bear to look round me through an extended circle, and see the impatience of despite in every face. Man was not born to live alone. He is linked to his brethren by a thousand ties; and, when those ties are broken, he ceases from all genuine existence. Their complacence is a food more invigorating than ambrosia; their aversion is a torment worse than that of the damned. While I write, I seem again to hear resounding in my ears the hootings and clamours of these infatuated peasants. When heard indeed, they went to my heart, and sat there colder than the aspic’s venom: they rose to my throat with a sensation bitterer than wormwood. I began however, like the critics I am figuring to myself, to despise the pusillanimity of my submission, and to believe that, if I would only make a stand and turn round upon my enemy, I should subdue him. This resolution I could with difficulty have taken in the moment of attack; it was formed in an interval of retrospect and reflection. Having formed it, the contempt I should have felt for myself would have been too exquisite, if I had failed to put it in execution. I was not long at a loss for an opportunity. In one of my walks I found myself pursued by a numerous populace with a peculiar degree of inveteracy. I yielded for some time, till I came to a place that appeared convenient for the purpose of haranguing them. It was a bench, placed upon a rising ground and sheltered behind by a thicket, which had been erected for the purpose of commanding a neighbouring prospect. I stopped; I stepped upon the bench; I waved my hand towards the multitude. They perceived my purpose with some degree of confusion and surprise; they drew nearer. “Do not listen to him! Do not hear a word he has to say!” cried some of them. “Oh, hear him! hear him!” exclaimed others. I obtained an audience. “What is the cause,” said I, “of all this hatred and persecution?” “Because you are a wizard, a necromancer, a dealer in the black art; because you are in league with hell, and have sold yourself to the devil!” answered twenty voices at once. “Hear me,” replied I, “and I will convince you of my innocence: but hear me in silence, and do not interrupt me.” “For myself, I have no belief in the existence of such an art.” This remark produced a general groan. “Why should I have sold myself to the foe of mankind? What could he give me, that should compensate me for consigning myself over to him for ever hereafter? The power of exhibiting strange and extraordinary tricks. What a pitiful recompence? But, if I had bought this power at so dear a price, should I hide it? Should I not take every opportunity of exciting your reverence and astonishment? Who has seen me perform any wonderful feat? I live quietly among you, and give no cause of offence to any. I live retired in the midst of my family. I form no party or connections. I do not intrude into any of your affairs, political or private. I do not even enter into conferences with any of you, unless induced by the apparent occasion of doing some good and benevolent action. “Quit then this ungenerous persecution! Do not turn the fury of your resentment upon a harmless stranger! You are Italians, the most polished and ingenious people on the face of the earth: the most glorious monuments of art, in building, in statuary, and in painting, are to be found in the midst of you: ancient Italy governed the world by her arms; modern Italy governs the world through the medium of that pure and sublime religion of which Providence has graciously made her the repository. Do not stain the glory of this character! Show yourselves worthy of the honour with which your name is heard in every corner of the habitable world!” While I was yet speaking, a large clot of mud reached me, and struck me on the face and the upper part of my breast. I calmly endeavoured to free myself from its effects with my handkerchief; and, looking round me, demanded, in the sacred spirit of conscious innocence, “How have I deserved this treatment?” Thus far I had been heard with a doubtful sentiment of murmur and approbation, and I began to feel that I was rather gaining ground upon my audience. But this new insult seemed to turn the tide of popular impression in an instant. “Villain, renegado, accursed of God!” I heard from every side; “did not you bewitch my cow? did not you enchant my child? have not you killed my daughter? Down with him! exterminate him! do not suffer him to live!” I continued my efforts to be heard. It was a critical moment, a last experiment upon the power of firmness and innocence to control the madness of infuriated superstition. It was in vain. I was deafened with the noise that assailed me. It was no longer shouts and clamours of disapprobation. It was the roaring of tigers, and the shriek of cannibals. Sticks, stones, and every kind of missile weapon that offered itself, fell in showers around me. It seemed a sort of miracle that I escaped instant destruction. I eluded their pursuit: after some time I ventured to return to my own house. I had in the interval terrified myself with the idea that, having missed my person, they might have hurried thither, and executed some terrible vengeance on my helpless family. I found them however in safety: the mob had for this time contented itself to disperse without further mischief. As soon as it was dark, I hastened to Pisa, and related what had just occurred to my friend the marchese. He was surprised; but he still adhered to his opinion. He had never supposed, he told me, that a noisy and clamorous mob was a proper subject upon which to make experiment of the energy of truth; and he laughed at my attempt to reason them out of their superstition. But they meant nothing by all that had passed. It was the mere foam and fury of a moment, poured out with vehemence, and then dissipated in air. A certain set of politicians had for their particular ends represented a mob as a terrific and formidable engine: alas! they were rather to be pitied than condemned. There was no malice in their hearts. They were in reality a mere material machine, led on without reflection, and, when they had committed a momentary ravage, astonished themselves the most at the injury they had perpetrated. They were as light and variable as a feather, driven with every breath; and nothing could argue greater obliquity of intellect than to suppose, because they I staid two hours with the marchese, and then set out to my own house. The way I took was by a private road, open only to the neighbouring gentry, but of which my servant carried the key. It led along the higher ground, and commanded a view of the common highway. Considerably before I reached my own habitation, I was struck with the appearance of persons passing, in considerable numbers, and in a tumultuous manner, along the public road. Some of them were armed with clubs, and others with torches. Their march however led, not towards my house, but in an opposite direction. I mended my pace, terrified with a sort of vague apprehension of what might have happened, though I did not disguise to myself that what I saw was not precisely that which I might have expected to see, if they had been returned from demolishing my property, and burning my house. When I arrived, I found indeed that no mischief had been actually committed, but that I was indebted for the preservation of my house, and perhaps for the lives of my wife and children, to the sagacity and presence of mind of I no longer yielded the smallest degree of credit to the unsuspicious and confiding philosophy of the marchese Filosanto. I sent off my wife and children before daybreak for Lucca, determined to take shipping at the first convenient port, and pass over into Spain. I was little solicitous, for reasons with which the reader is already acquainted, about my property and moveables: I had no motive to induce me to fetter and clog my retreat, at this hour of peril and terror, with a single article of rarity and price. My furniture indeed was not splendid, but it was handsome and valuable; and the indifference with which I resigned the whole to the mercy of chance, was a matter of some surprise to the persons around me. My servants offered to defend my possessions, at the peril of their lives; but I peremptorily forbade it. I would not even consent to their taking away certain articles, by way of appropriating them to their personal use. I believed that if I admitted The directions I issued being unhesitating and peremptory, met with a ready submission from all my other domestics: Hector only, the mild and complying Hector, of whom obedience had hitherto appeared to constitute the very soul, met my commands with a resolute refusal. The present distressed appearance of my fortunes seemed to have worked the poor fellow’s mind to a paroxysm of insanity. He considered himself as the sole author of my calamity. He reviled himself in the bitterest terms of compunction and abhorrence. The language which the agony of his soul forced from his lips, was such as could not fail to impress upon my other servants a conviction of the justice of the imputations that were now brought against us. This however was of little importance. I must at all events have been contented to leave behind me, in my present neighbourhood, a name loaded with the execrations of religious fanaticism. Hector imprecated upon himself a thousand curses, if, so long as he continued to live, the populace should lay hands upon a straw of my property. He would not move so much as an inch from the defence of my house. He would either, by preserving it, expiate in some degree the mischief in which he had involved me, or fall and be crushed to death in the midst of its ruins. Arguments and expostulations were useless here: his mind was worked up to too high a tone, to be susceptible of the patience necessary for hearing or understanding any reasoning that was This business being despatched, I went, at the invitation of the marchese, to a small cottage he possessed at no great distance from my own house. Its situation was so private and retired, that few persons knew or could perceive that there was any building on the spot. Here therefore I could remain in the most perfect safety. I felt myself unaccountably impelled to stay and witness the catastrophe of the tragedy. I should not have been satisfied to continue in uncertainty as to what it would prove. After all that had passed, like the marchese, I should have been apt to accuse myself of cowardice, and a mind soured and degenerate, if the mob had not put their threats in execution. The marchese himself was well pleased with my determination in this respect. He was not yet convinced that I had not painted to myself a danger, which had no adequate counterpart in the world of realities. I had not long to wait. The night had no sooner spread an even-coloured and almost impervious veil over the world, than the marchese, as if moved by a secret impulse to witness what he yet refused to believe, came to me at the cottage. He had scarcely arrived, when he heard the confused murmurs and turbulence of the populace; for we were near enough to distinguish almost every thing. As they did not meet with the defence of the preceding evening, the work they had undertaken was presently despatched. We saw the flames ascend. We recognised the shouts of infernal joy with which they witnessed the catastrophe. When the marchese beheld what, till seen, he would never admit to be possible, he burst out into a sort of transport of misanthropy. He exclaimed that no innocence, and no merit, could defend a man from the unrelenting antipathy of his fellows. He saw that there was a principle in the human mind destined to be eternally at war with improvement The worst event of this detested evening remains yet unrecorded. Even now I tremble, while I attempt to commit the story to my harmless paper. So far as related to the mere destruction of my property, I looked on with a philosophical indifference. I had no reason, and I disdained to regret the loss of that which I had it in my power to repair in a moment. I thought I had taken care that no human life should be risqued upon this critical occasion. But I was mistaken. I learned the next morning with anguish inexpressible that Hector, the negro of the prison of Constance, was no more. He had eluded the vigilance of his keepers. No sooner was he at liberty, then he hastened, unknown to every one, to die, as he had declared he would, in the defence of my house. The mob had burst into the house; they seized him alive. They dragged him out in the midst of them; they insulted over him, as the special favourite of the infernal king. They inflicted on him every species of mockery and of torture; they killed him joint by joint, and limb by limb.——The pen drops from my lifeless hand. What right had I to make this man the victim of my idle and unhallowed pursuits? What has the art and multiplication of gold in it, that should compensate the |