The reader must not suppose from the circumstance of my seeing the Gazette, that I was in the habit of hearing news, or could obtain any. No! though all the agents employed around me were kind, the system was such as to inspire the utmost terror. If there occurred the least clandestine proceeding, it was only when the danger was not felt—when not the least risk appeared. The extreme rareness of any such occurrences may be gathered from what has been stated respecting the ordinary and extraordinary searches which took place, morning, noon, and night, through every corner of our dungeons.

I had never a single opportunity of receiving any notice, however slight, regarding my family, even by secret means, beyond the allusions in the Gazette to my sister and myself. The fears I entertained lest my dear parents no longer survived were greatly augmented, soon after, by the manner in which the police director came to inform me that my relatives were well.

“His Majesty the Emperor,” he said, “commands me to communicate to you good tidings of your relations at Turin.”

I could not express my pleasure and my surprise at this unexpected circumstance; but I soon put a variety of questions to him as to their health: “Left you my parents, brothers, and sisters, at Turin? are they alive? if you have any letter from them pray let me have it.”

“I can show you nothing. You must be satisfied. It is a mark of the Emperor’s clemency to let you know even so much. The same favour is not shown to every one.”

“I grant it is a proof of the Emperor’s kindness; but you will allow it to be impossible for me to derive the least consolation from information like this. Which of my relations are well? have I lost no one?”

“I am sorry, sir, that I cannot state more than I have been directed.” And he retired.

It must assuredly have been intended to console me by this indefinite allusion to my family. I felt persuaded that the Emperor had yielded to the earnest petition of some of my relatives to permit me to hear tidings of them, and that I was permitted to receive no letter in order to remain in the dark as to which of my dear family were now no more. I was the more confirmed in this supposition from the fact of receiving a similar communication a few months subsequently; but there was no letter, no further news.

It was soon perceived that so far from having been productive of satisfaction to me, such meagre tidings had thrown me into still deeper affliction, and I heard no more of my beloved family. The continual suspense, the distracting idea that my parents were dead, that my brothers also might be no more, that my sister Giuseppina was gone, and that Marietta was the sole survivor, and that in the agony of her sorrow she had thrown herself into a convent, there to close her unhappy days, still haunted my imagination, and completely alienated me from life.

Not unfrequently I had fresh attacks of the terrible disorders under which I had before suffered, with those of a still more painful kind, such as violent spasms of the stomach, exactly like cholera morbus, from the effects of which I hourly expected to die. Yes! and I fervently hoped and prayed that all might soon be over.

At the same time, nevertheless, whenever I cast a pitying glance at my no less weak and unfortunate companion—such is the strange contradiction of our nature—I felt my heart inly bleed at the idea of leaving him, a solitary prisoner, in such an abode; and again I wished to live.