The hated Austrians now ruled Lombardy and
Venice. In Rome, now that the Pope again had temporal, power, the
political affairs of the city were in the hands of Cardinal Antonelli,
who suppressed political agitation with great severity. It was not only
an American audience before North Market Hall in Clark Street, Chicago,
that denied the freedom of speech. Cardinals were up to the same thing,
as well as mobs.
Serafino told me calmly, with occasional profanity, of the arrest of
large numbers of Italians who belonged to the Unita Italiana at Naples,
whose condemnation was speedily followed by hideous dungeons and
atrocious cruelties. There was slavery in Italy too!
Italy was under the heel of Austria. Religious bigotry, more subtle and
more powerful than the slavocracy of America, was crushing hope from the
lives of the Italians, while Mazzini and Cavour battled like Titans
against the powerful hierarchy of monarchy and Catholicism. There was
little of the history of Italy, of ancient Rome, that was seemingly
unknown to Serafino. He had read all his life; and he had been in the
actual conflicts of awakening Italy. Now his head shook a little when
his face reddened from suppressed wrath. He cursed quietly, but with a
terrible energy. He was poor; but there was a refinement in his personal
appearance.
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