Meanwhile the North had felt the thrill. In Lombardy the hawk-eyed government pounced down on possible conspirators. Silvio Pellico, the pathetic author of "Le Mie Prigioni" (My Prisons), and his friend Maroncelli, were arrested and put into prison (1820), there to stay for ten years. A little later Confalonieri, head of the Milanese nobility, and a group of gentlemen were seized and sent to prison. They were set free only in 1836, on the accession of a new Emperor. Some of them, Castillia, Foresti, and Albinola, then sought refuge in the United States. I quote from the unpublished diary of an American to show what kind of men these conspirators were: "Castillia is an Italian, of an honourable Milanese family. At the age of twenty-three he, with other noble and brave Italians, lovers of their country, was thrown into the dungeons of Spielberg (Moravia) by Austrian despots, and there chained and confined, sometimes in total solitude, enduring the sharpest privations and basest ignominies for seventeen years. Then on the accession of a new Emperor they were released and exiled to America--they were men of superior intelligence and education, honourable gentlemen, true-hearted, loving men--Castillia possessed all the virtues that one can name and in their most attractive forms." What these gentlemen suffered for love of their country may be read in "Le Mie Prigioni." Pellico himself was a Christian saint. After years of solitary confinement he and Maroncelli were put together. Maroncelli had a tumour on his leg, which grew so painful that whenever it was necessary to move Pellico helped him. "Sometimes to make the slightest shift from one position to another cost a quarter of an hour of agony." The wound was frightful and disgusting. I quote from Pellico: "In that deplorable condition Maroncelli composed poetry, he sang and talked, and did everything to deceive me and hide from me a part of his pain. He could not digest, or sleep; he grew alarmingly thin, and often went out of his head; and yet, in a few minutes gathered himself together and cheered me up. What he suffered for nine months is indescribable. Amputation was necessary; but first the surgeon had to get permission from Vienna. Maroncelli uttered no cry at the operation, and when he saw the leg carried off said to the surgeon, 'You have liberated me from an enemy, and I have no way to thank you.' By the window stood a tumbler with a rose in it. 'Please give me that rose,' he said to me. I handed it to him, and he gave it to the old surgeon, saying, 'I have nothing else to give you in testimony of my gratitude.' The surgeon took the rose and burst into tears." Such was the character of the men who plotted for the freedom of Italy.