If the thing was here and there a fashion, it was still no
trifling praise for Vittoria that she, as least, never went out of
fashion, and in her latest years produced the most profound
impressions. It was long before other countries had anything similar to
show.
In the imagination then, which governed this people more than any
other, lies one general reason why the course of every passion was
violent, and why the means used for the gratification of passion were
often criminal. There is a violence which cannot control itself because
it is born of weakness; but in Italy we find what is the corruption of
powerful natures. Sometimes this corruption assumes a colossal shape,
and crime seems to acquire almost a personal existence of its own.
The restraints of which men were conscious were but few. Each
individual, even among the lowest of the people, felt himself inwardly
emancipated from the control of the State and its police, whose title
to respect was illegitimate, and itself founded on violence; and no man
believed any longer in the justice of the law. When a murder was
committed, the sympathies of the people, before the circumstances of
the case were known, ranged themselves instinctively on the side of the
murderer. A proud, manly bearing before and at the execution excited
such admiration that the narrator often forgets to tell us for what
offence the criminal was put to death.
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