The anomalous tyranny under which the nation had collapsed
was demonstrated not so much by the outward aspect as by the moral
facts of that fatal day in the Piazza of San Marco. On the scaffold
were a group of educated, courageous, honest Italians, guarded by
Austrian soldiers and overlooked by the official representative of
imperial despotism; their attitude was criminal, their acts sublime;
ostensibly condemned, they were in reality glorified. Not a being in
that vast multitude, except the official creatures of Austria, but
gazed with respect, love, sorrow, pride, tenderness, and admiration
upon her noble victims; it was the apparent triumph of physical force,
and the actual realization of moral superiority: the silence of that
multitude was the eloquent protest of humanity.
And this ominous silence was all at once broken by the clear,
well-emphasized voice of a judicial officer, reading the sentence; it
was listened to with such breathless attention, that, when the phrase,
_condemned to death_, was uttered, a visible shudder vibrated, like an
electric shock, through the dense mass of human beings, and upturned
faces flushed or grew pallid in an instant; but scarcely were these
simultaneous emotions recognized, when another phrase, _life granted_,
called forth a cry as of one mighty voice.
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