Fifteen Years in a Dungeon.

Manawatu Standard, Volume IX, Issue 80, 7 March 1885, Page 4

Fifteen Years m a Dungeon.

The following is one of the most affecting records m existence. It is from Count Gonfalonieri,s account of his imprisonment m the fortress of Spielbery, above the town of Brunn, m Moravia, for a politicial offence, m the reign of the Emperor Francis of Austria, who died m 1 835. He was an Italian, and had conspired to dispossess the Austrians at Milan : — " I am an old man now, but, by fifteen years my soul is younger than my body ! Fifteen years I existed (for I did not live ; it was not life) m the self-same dungeon 10ft. square. During six years I had a companion ; during nine I was alone .! I never rightly distinguished the face of him who shared my captivity m the eternal twilight of our cell. The first year we talked incessantly together. We related our past lives, our joys for ever gone, over and over again. The next year we communicated to each other our thonghts and ideas on all subjects. The third year we had no ideas to communicate — we were beginning to lose the power of reflection. The fourth, at an interval of a month or so, we would open our lips to ask each other if it were indeed possible that the world went on as when we formed a portion of mankind. The fifth, we were silent. The sixth, he was taken away— I never knew were — to execution, to liberty — but I was glad he was gone ; even solitude were better than that dim, vaacnt face. After that I was alone. Only one event broke m upon my nine years misery. One day— it must have been a year or two after my companion left me — rthe dungeon door was opened, and a voice, from whom proceeding I knew not, uttered these words : — " By order of His Imperial Majesty, I intimate to you that your wife died a year ago." Then the door shut aud I heard no more. * They but flung this great agony m upon me, alone with it." The companion for six years with Count Gonfalonieri was a Frenchman, Count Andryane, who has since published some memoirs of his own life (" Me"moires d\m Prisonnier d'Etat, par Oomte Alexandre Andryane ""). He mentions that Count Gonfalonieri was liberated at the Emperor's death, m 1835, and sent to the United States, from wheuce he returned to Austria. There broken down by sorrow, and suffering, he wandered about for a few years, and died at Urian, December 1846. He wrote to his friend. Count Andryane, from New York : — " Qu'il etait comme l'orabre dun trepass6 errant sur la terre etranger aux joies, anx agitations, et presque a tout les interets de cette vie." Count Andrvane adds the touching incident that for a time Count Gonfalonieri was allowed to receive letters from his wife and when she was dying she wrote several letters, dating thorn at different future periods, that he might, when they were delivered, think she was still alive. — « Household Words."