CHAPTER XXIV.



I had now to confront the terrors of a state trial. What was my
dread of implicating others by my answers! What difficulty to
contend against so many strange accusations, so many suspicions of
all kinds! How impossible, almost, not to become implicated by
these incessant examinations, by daily new arrests, and the
imprudence of other parties, perhaps not known to you, yet belonging
to the same movement! I have decided not to speak on politics; and
I must suppress every detail connected with the state trials. I
shall merely observe that, after being subjected for successive
hours to the harassing process, I retired in a frame of mind so
excited, and so enraged, that I should assuredly have taken my own
life, had not the voice of religion, and the recollection of my
parents restrained my hand. I lost the tranquillity of mind I had
acquired at Milan; during many days, I despaired of regaining it,
and I cannot even allude to this interval without feelings of
horror. It was vain to attempt it, I could not pray; I questioned
the justice of God; I cursed mankind, and all the world, revolving
in my mind all the possible sophisms and satires I could think of,
respecting the hollowness and vanity of virtue. The disappointed
and the exasperated are always ingenious in finding accusations
against their fellow-creatures, and even the Creator himself. Anger
is of a more universal and injurious tendency than is generally
supposed. As we cannot rage and storm from morning till night, and