shrank from extreme measures, and was content with an oath of
retraction; but the Austrian government gave instant orders to the
chiefs of police, both there and at Venice, to arrest those whom the
perjured Count Villa named as adherents of Carbonarism. The decree was
executed with military force; and, without warning, preparation, or
even a parting interview with their families and friends, the suspected
were hurried off to the Piombi, that Venetian prison so graphically
described by Pellico. All correspondence and personal intercourse was
denied. Meantime, an ingenious and persevering investigation went on,
to ascertain the scope of the enterprise thus summarily baffled, the
means proposed, and the individuals implicated. To complicate still
further the situation of the victims, in other quarters the flame they
had secretly fed burst forth conspicuously; Naples and Piedmont were in
arms; and Austria conceived an alarming idea of the national spirit she
had partially contravened. The rigor of espionage towards the
imprisoned and their friends increased; the prosecution was insidiously
prolonged; privation and solitude, vigilance and suspense were made
instruments for subduing the resolution and invading the confidence of
the captives; they pined in desolation, ignorant of their fate,
uninformed of the welfare of those most dear to them, without resources
of defence or consolation, except what the strength of individual
character yields; physically weakened, morally isolated; sometimes
roused from sleep and bewildered with questions; at other times told
they were to die, that some companion had confessed, or that some loved
one had ceased to exist;--and all these crises of feeling and anxiety,
of surprise and despair, induced with a fiendish deliberation, to
startle honor into self-betrayal, wring from exhausted Nature what
conscious rectitude would not divulge, or agonize human love into
inadvertent disloyalty.