"You are right--it is you that I love, and little as I understand

and deserve it, I see now that you love me with all your soul and

strength. I cannot keep my pen from writing it, and yet it is

madness to do so, for the obstacles to our union are just as

insurmountable as before.

"It is not only my unflinching devotion to public work that

separates us, though that is a serious impediment; it is not only

the inequality of our birth and social conditions, though that is

an honest difficulty. The barrier between us is not merely a

barrier made by man, it is a barrier made by God--it is death.

"Think what that would be in the ordinary case of death by

disease. A man is doomed to die by cancer or consumption, and even

while he is engaged in a desperate struggle with the mightiest and

most relentless conqueror, love comes to him with its dreams of

life and happiness. What then? Every hour of joy is poisoned for

him henceforth by visions of the end that is so near, in every

embrace he feels the arms of death about him, and in every kiss

the chill breath of the tomb.

"Terrible tragedy! Yet not without relief. Nature is kind. Her

miracles are never-ending. Hope lives to the last. The balm of

God's healing hand may come down from heaven and make all things

well. Not so the death I speak of. It is pitiless and inevitable,

without hope or dreams.

"Remember what I told you in this room on the night you came here

first. Had you forgotten it? Your father, charged with an attempt

at regicide, as part of a plan of insurrection, was deported

without trial, and I, who shared his views, and had expressed them

in letters that were violated, being outside the jurisdiction of

the courts, was tried in contumacy and condemned to death.

"I am back in Italy for all that, under another name, my mother's

name, which is my name too, thanks to the merciless marriage laws

of my country, with other aims and other opinions, but I have

never deceived myself for a moment. The same doom hangs over me

still, and though the court which condemned me was a military

court, and its sentence would be modified by a Court of Assize, I

see no difference between death in a moment on the gallows, and in

five, ten, twenty years in a cell.

"What am I to do? I love you, you love me. Shall I, like the poor

consumptive, to whom gleams of happiness have come too late,

conceal everything and go on deluding myself with hopes, indulging

myself with dreams? It would be unpardonable, it would be cruel,

it would be wrong and wicked.




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