Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth CenturyGaribaldi, Giuseppe
History
Rule of the Monk; Or, Rome in the Nineteenth Century
Garibaldi, Giuseppe
Italian fiction -- Translations into English; Rome (Italy) -- History -- 1798-1870 -- Fiction
Oh, beautiful wert thou in those days, ill-fated Queen! when thy
Dandoli, thy Morosini, sought, in the name of Venice, to propitiate the
waves on behalf of the bold navigators of the Adriatic. Hail to thee,
Republic of nine centuries! true mother of Republics! Yet if in thy
greatness thou hadst associated with thine Italian sisters instead
of hating them, the foreigner would not have trodden us all down and
enslaved us. Hide the wounds that your chains have made, smooth the
lines that misery has impressed on your forehead. Do not forget, whether
rejoicing or sorrowing, those humiliations through which you have
passed, and henceforth remember that only when united can Italy defy the
great foreign powers who are jealous of her uprise.
General Garibaldi stood leaning against a balcony of St. Mark's Palace,
which looked over the lagoon, in the company of our fair Romans, with
Muzio, Orazio, and Gasparo. He was listening to an old cicerone, who was
dilating on the ancient glories of the Republic, and after having spoken
on a variety of subjects, this individual had arrived at the description
of the festival of the Bucentaur. He expressed his regret at not being
able to see one of them nowadays, and pointed to the spot whence
from the mole started the famous craft, when suddenly Muzio's eye was
arrested by a well-known face, which appeared at the entrance of
the cabin of a gondola drawn up at the gates of the palace. Muzio
disappeared like lightning, and stood before Attilio, who descended,
pressed his friend's right hand, and could only articulate the
melancholy word, "Dead!"
"It was fated, then, that this relic of Roman greatness should come here
to die," murmured the ex-President, having partly heard, partly guessed
the tidings of Attilio.
"He died like a brave man," said the chief of the Three Hundred.
"And many Italians know how to die so," thought Muzio; "but it is
sweeter to die fighting against the oppressors!"
"I will return to our party," said Muzio, "and consult with the General,
that he may turn our excursion in another direction, so as not to expose
Irene and Orazio to the shock of meeting the remains of their beloved
one; I will afterwards rejoin you with Gasparo."
CHAPTER LX. THE BURIAL
Foscolo has these lines--
A stone to mark my bones from the vaut crop
That death soirs on the land or in the sea.
Admiring the mournful poems of this great singer, we are, like him,
advocates for honoring the great dead, and truly we believe that doing
homage to departed virtue is an incentive to make the living follow in
its path. When one thinks, however, of the gaudy pageants with which the
priesthood deck the last journey of the dead, one can not help deploring
the useless show and the expenditure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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