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For a few years I had
acted in that capacity with Giacomo and Giulio Porro, two young men
of noble promise, whom I loved, and shall continue to love as if
they were my own sons. Often while in prison were my thoughts
busied with them; and how it grieved me not to be enabled to
complete their education. I sincerely prayed that they might meet
with a new master, who would be as much attached to them as I had
been.
At times I could not help exclaiming to myself, What a strange
burlesque is all this! instead of two noble youths, rich in all that
nature and fortune can endow them with, here I have a pupil, poor
little fellow! deaf, dumb, a castaway; the son of a robber, who at
most can aspire only to the rank of an under-jailer, and which, in a
little less softened phraseology, would mean to say a sbirro. {2}
This reflection confused and disquieted me; yet hardly did I hear
the strillo {3} of my little dummy than I felt my heart grow warm
again, just as a father when he hears the voice of a son. I lost
all anxiety about his mean estate. It is no fault of his if he be
lopped of Nature's fairest proportions, and was born the son of a
robber. A humane, generous heart, in an age of innocence, is always
respectable. I looked on him, therefore, from day to day with
increased affection, and was more than ever desirous of cultivating
his good qualities, and his growing intelligence. Nay, perhaps we
might both live to get out of prison, when I would establish him in
the college for the deaf and dumb, and thus open for him a path more
fortunate and pleasing than to play the part of a shirro. Whilst
thus pleasingly engaged in meditating his future welfare, two of the
under-jailers one day walked into my cell.
"You must change your quarters, sir!"
"What mean you by that?"
"We have orders to remove you into another chamber."
"Why so?"
"Some other great bird has been caged, and this being the better
apartment--you understand."
"Oh, yes! it is the first resting-place for the newly arrived."
They conveyed me to the opposite side of the court, where I could no
longer converse with my little deaf and dumb friend, and was far
removed from the ground floor. In walking across, I beheld the poor
boy sitting on the ground, overcome with grief and astonishment, for
he knew he had lost me. Ere I quite disappeared, he ran towards me;
my conductors tried to drive him away, but he reached me, and I
caught him in my arms, and returned his caresses with expressions of
tenderness I sought not to conceal. I tore myself from him, and
entered my new abode.
CHAPTER IX.
It was a dark and gloomy place; instead of glass it had pasteboard
for the windows; the walls were rendered more repulsive by being
hung with some wretched attempts at painting, and when free from
this lugubrious colour, were covered with inscriptions. These last
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