A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
History
A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)
Trollope, Thomas Adolphus
Italy -- Biography; Women -- Biography
The names of these misled youths were Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani,
Girolamo Olgiato, and Carlo Visconti. The first was killed by one of
the Duke's attendants immediately after the commission of his crime.
Visconti was arrested, and ordered to immediate execution by being
quartered. Olgiato escaped from the church, and fled to his father's
house. But father and brothers alike refused to afford him any shelter.
His mother alone found means to persuade a certain priest to hide the
murderer in his house. After three days' concealment, the unhappy youth
crept forth to ascertain the aspect of the city, and the feelings of
the citizens thus liberated from their tyrant. The first sight that met
his eyes was the corpse of his friend and fellow criminal Lampugnani,
dragged through the streets by an exulting and ferocious rabble. This
horrible proof of the futility of all his hopes, and of the judgment
passed upon his deed by his fellow-citizens, so drove him to despair,
that he at once gave himself up into the hands of justice. On his trial
for the crime, seeing that none were left alive who could be injured
by the recital, he gave a full account of the whole conspiracy. And
from this document are drawn the narratives of the historians. He was
condemned to be torn to pieces by iron pincers, "tanagliato;"—that
being the proper juridical term to indicate a by no means unprecedented
mode of punishment.
"Stabit vetus memoria facti" were the last words uttered by the dying
regicide, as the living flesh was being rent from the quivering
muscles. And indeed the sad story has been made the subject of a
tragedy much praised by Milanese[67] writers; but which does not seem,
unfortunately, to have so moralised the tale, as to make it likely that
it should at present be represented in the theatres of that city.
[Sidenote: THE DUKE'S CHARACTER.]
And, truly, when we find a man in the position, and of the character
of Verri, writing a grave and learned history at the close of the
last century, and representing in its well-considered pages the deed
of Girolamo Olgiato as similar in kind to that of Oliver Cromwell, we
cannot but become sensible how wholly and irreconcileably different
the views and moral judgments of a law-respecting Anglo-Saxon on such
subjects, must needs be from those of a people, to whom, for centuries,
LAW has been presented only as the expression of a despot's
will. To the inmost heart of nations so trained amiss, we may be sure,
that "the wild justice of revenge" will commend itself with a force of
honest conviction, proportioned ever to the amount of wrong suffered,
and not to the heinousness of wrong done, by those who, at their own
risk and peril, take upon themselves the execution of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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