CHAPTER XXI. THE TORTURE
As the hour of solemn vengeance had not yet struck, fright, and frightalone for the black-robed rulers of Rome was the result of the events wehave detailed.
The priests were in mortal terror lest the thread by which the sword ofpopular wrath was suspended should be cut.
The hour, however, had not struck; the measure of the cup was not full;the God of justice delayed the day of his retribution.
Know you what the lust of priests is to torture? Do you know that by thepriests Galileo was tortured? Galileo, the greatest of Italians! Who butpriests could have committed him to the torture? Who but an archbishopcould have condemned to death by starvation in a walled-up prisonUgolino and his four sons?
Where but in Rome have priests hated virtue and learning while theyfostered ignorance and patronized vice? Woe to the man who, gifted byGod above his fellows, has dared to exhibit his talent in Papal Italy.Has he not been immediately consigned to moral and physical tortures,until he admitted darkness was light?
Is it not surprising that in spite of the light of the nineteenthcentury, a people should be found willing to believe the blasphemousfables called the doctrines of the Church, and the priests permitted tohold or withhold salvation at their pleasure, and to exercise such powerin such a continent, that rulers court their alliance as a meansof enabling them the more effectually to keep, in subjection theirmiserable subjects?
In England, America, and Switzerland this torture has been abolished.There progress is not a mere word. In Rome the torture exists in all itspower, though concealed. Light has yet to penetrate the secrets of thosedens of infamy called cloisters, seminaries, convents, where beings,male and female, are immured as long as life lasts, and are bound byterrible vows to resign forever the ties of natural affection and sacredfriendship.
Fearful are the punishments inflicted upon any hapless member suspectedof being lax in his belief, or desirous of being released from hisoaths. Redress for them is impossible in a country where despotism isabsolute, and the liberty of the press chained.
Yes, in Rome, where sits the Vicar of God, the representative of Christ,the man of peace, the torture, I say, still exists as in the times ofSaint Dominic and Torquemada. The cord and the pincers are in constantrequisition in these present days of political convulsion.
Poor Dentato, the sergeant of dragoons who facilitated the escape ofManlio, soon experienced this. He had been unfortunately identified asengaged at the Quirinal Morning, noon, and night means too horrible todivulge were resorted to to compel him to give up the names of thoseconcerned in the attack upon the prison. Failing to gain their point,he had been left by his tormentors a shapeless mass, imploring hispersecutors to show mercy by putting him to death.
Unhappy man! the executioners falsely declared he had denounced hisaccomplices, and continued daily to make fresh arrests.
Yet the world still tolerates these fiends in human form, and kingsmoreover impose them upon our unhappy countries. God grant the peopleof Italy will before long have the will and the courage to break thishateful yoke from off their necks! God set us free, before we are wearyof praying, from those who take His holy name in vain, and chase Christhimself out of the Temple to set their money-changing stalls therein!