ostensibly condemned, they were in reality glorified. Not a being in
that vast multitude, except the official creatures of Austria, but
gazed with respect, love, sorrow, pride, tenderness, and admiration
upon her noble victims; it was the apparent triumph of physical force,
and the actual realization of moral superiority: the silence of that
multitude was the eloquent protest of humanity.

And this ominous silence was all at once broken by the clear,
well-emphasized voice of a judicial officer, reading the sentence; it
was listened to with such breathless attention, that, when the phrase,
_condemned to death_, was uttered, a visible shudder vibrated, like an
electric shock, through the dense mass of human beings, and upturned
faces flushed or grew pallid in an instant; but scarcely were these
simultaneous emotions recognized, when another phrase, _life granted_,
called forth a cry as of one mighty voice. All were spared: but a
sentence, to such as understood its meaning, of living death,--_carcere
duro_ in Spielberg and the Castle of Lubiano,--some for ten, others for
fifteen, and the remainder for twenty years,--was substituted.

This entire ceremony was characteristic of Austrian despotism, aware of
the profound sympathy among the Italians for their patriot martyrs, of
the widespread disaffection, of the necessity of exciting vague and
terrible apprehension,--and at the same time conscious that policy
forbade arousing the fury of despair. The accused were thus kept more
than two years alternating from hope to desperation, the people in
ignorance of the issue, and then, when led out, as they supposed, to
die, they served as a warning to those who dared imperial vengeance,
while, by a sudden act of apparent clemency, the government at once rid
itself of formidable opponents and assumed the character of merciful
executors of law! It was rumored that the consideration of his youth