Silvio Pellico.

— “Such a state was a veritable malady; I do not know whether I should call it a kind of somnambulism. It seemed to me that there were within me two men: one who wished to write continually, another who wished to do something else…

“During those horrible nights, at times my imagination became exalted to such a point that, fully awake, I seemed to hear in my prison now groans, now stifled laughter. From childhood I had never believed in sorcerers, nor in Spirits, but now this laughter and these noises frightened me; I did not know how to explain them; I was forced to doubt whether I was not the plaything of some unknown and malevolent force.

“Several times, trembling, I took up the light and looked to see whether someone might be hidden under my bed, to amuse himself at my expense. When I was at the table, now it seemed to me that someone was tugging at my clothes, now that they pushed a book that fell to the floor; I also thought that a person, behind me, was blowing on the candle so that it would go out. Then, rising precipitately, I would look about me; I went about distrustful and asked myself whether I was mad or in the fullness of reason, for, amid all that I experienced, I could no longer distinguish reality from illusion, and I exclaimed in anguish: My God, my God, ut quid dereliquisti me? “Once, having lain down before dawn, I believed myself perfectly certain of having placed my handkerchief under the pillow. After a moment of torpor, I awoke as usual and it seemed to me that I was being strangled. I felt my neck tightly squeezed. Strange thing! I was wrapped in my handkerchief, strongly tied with several knots! I would have sworn I had not made those knots, had not touched the handkerchief since I had placed it under the pillow. It must have been that I had done it while dreaming or in a fit of delirium, without keeping the slightest memory of it. But I could not believe it, and, from that moment, every night I feared being strangled.”

— If some of these facts may be attributed to an imagination overexcited by suffering, there are others that really seem to be provoked by invisible agents, and one must not forget that Silvio Pellico did not believe in these things. This cause could not come to his mind and, in the impossibility of explaining it, what was happening around him filled him with terror. Today, now that his Spirit is freed from the veil of matter, he gives himself an account not only of these facts, but of the various vicissitudes of his life; he recognizes as just what before seemed unjust to him. He gave his explanation in the following communication, requested for this purpose. (Society of Paris, October 18, 1867.)

How great and powerful is this God whom humans ceaselessly debase, wishing to define Him, and how the petty passions we attribute to Him in order to comprehend Him are a proof of our weakness and of our little advancement! a vengeful God! a judge God! an executioner God! No; all this exists only in the human imagination, incapable of comprehending the infinite. What mad temerity to wish to define God! He is the incomprehensible and the indefinable, and we can only bow beneath His powerful hand, without seeking to comprehend and analyze His nature. The facts are there to prove that He exists! Let us study these facts and, by means of them, let us ascend from cause to cause as far as we can go; but let us not throw ourselves toward the cause of causes save when we wholly possess the secondary causes and when we comprehend all their effects!… Yes, the laws of the Eternal are immutable! Today they strike the guilty, as they have always struck them, according to the nature of the faults committed and proportionally to those faults. They strike in an inexorable manner, and are followed by moral consequences, not fatal, but inevitable. The penalty of talion is a fact, and the word of the ancient law “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” is fulfilled in all its rigor. Not only is the proud man humbled, but he is struck in his pride in the same manner in which he struck others. The iniquitous judge sees himself condemned unjustly; the despot becomes oppressed! Yes, I governed men; I made them bend beneath a yoke of iron; I struck them in their affections and in their liberty; and later, in my turn, I had to bend to the oppressor, I was deprived of my affections and of my liberty!

But how can the oppressor of yesterday become the republican of the next day? The thing is most simple and the observation of the facts that take place before your eyes ought to give you the key. Do you not see, in the course of a single existence, one and the same personality now dominating, now dominated? and does it not happen that, if he governs despotically in the first case, he is, in the second, one of those who most energetically struggle against despotism? The same thing occurs from one existence to another. Certainly this is not a rule without exception, but, in general, those who apparently are the most obstinate liberals were formerly the most ardent partisans of power; and this is understood, for it is logical that those who had long been accustomed to reign without contestation and to satisfy without hindrance their least caprices, are those who most suffer oppression, and the most ardent to shake off their yoke. Despotism and its excesses, by an admirable consequence of the laws of God, necessarily drag those who exercise them to an immoderate love of liberty, and these two excesses, consuming each other reciprocally, inevitably bring calm and moderation.

Such are, apropos of the desire you expressed, the explanations I have judged fitting to give you. I shall be content if they can satisfy you.

Silvio Pellico. n [1]

[see Silvio Pellico.]