We Believed Page #4

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when there's a need to fight!

- What?

- I know everything.

You were in with

the dirtiest spies in Turin!

- You don't know a thing!

- You've disgraced our group!

- You're a traitor!

- You're false and a liar!

You've always despised me,

but now I despise you!

Come here, my Lord Angelo.

Want to see something?

Look here.

Do we abolish this?

Start a revolution right here?

- What is it?

- Don't you know?

Don't you know your families

steal oil from the farmers?

If you don't know, I'll tell you,

the overseer will tell you.

You bastard!

- I did it.

- What?

Salvatore was a spy, a traitor.

He sold out to the police,

he's been punished.

You're insane.

Mercy is the weapon of cowards,

history must see them as cowards,

betrayers, traitors like that rat!

An exemplary punishment was needed.

Revolutionary virtue is ruthless!

Mazzini would never have allowed

such infamy.

- He'd have struck the first blow!

- No.

This is no infamy,

it's an act ofjustice.

We made an oath.

Don't forget that.

Give me a clean shirt,

I have to leave right away.

When even your hopes

have been dashed,

not seven times,

but seventy times seven,

never repudiate hope.

When an attempt

is made without success,

we must look around,

look within ourselves

and reflect carefully.

Discover and admit

the mistakes made

and see where they came from.

Look for ways to put things right.

Then start again

from the beginning

and a third time and a fourth,

until you achieve it.

Ours is a war, a deadly war,

which has been fought for years,

for centuries,

and you think you'll win it

with the first battle.

Search them

and put their things here.

"I heard nothing more

about Angelo,"

"but during these years of conspiracy

I've always thought of you, Cristina."

"News reached me about your

contribution to the Roman Republic,"

"about the hospitals

you've organized"

"for the volunteers wounded

in battle,"

"and about the joy

in the eyes of those boys."

"The Republic in Rome, the Pope

fleeing with his court of bishops,"

"Mazzini proclaiming

universal suffrage,"

"the lands handed over

to the farmers."

"We couldn't have imagined

anything more grand."

"Italy was coming to being,

Cristina."

"We would become a united Italy,

free, republican, democratic."

"I had set out

to reach Garibaldi's army,"

"but I was ambushed."

"I fled and almost at the border,

I was arrested."

"I'm serving a 30-year sentence

for association with a sect,"

"hoarding of weapons

and armed insurrection."

Long Live the King...

Long Live the King...

"This is perhaps the last letter

I'll be able to send secretly."

"Please know

I've never stopped fighting"

"and I know that a nation will

never be free and independent"

"except through buying this freedom

with our blood."

"Your most devoted

and faithful Domenico."

MONTEFUSCO,

KINGDOM OF THE TWO SICILIES

Here you are!

Some come from Ischia,

some from Procida,

or from Nisida.

A penal settlement

for crimes of every type.

You're no longer

with the Camorra here,

there's no sea here,

we're at Montefusco here.

The King has declared this prison

a remarkable one!

You'll be locked up,

State criminals that you are.

I was raised on tobacco,

gambling, wine and swearing,

but I can read and write.

So I can make my reports,

but I never read.

Reading is a waste of time.

Makes a guy end up like you.

You're all scholars,

look at your ruin!

Damned pen and paper,

ink and all the books on Earth.

They've scrambled your minds.

Never ask for books,

or anything to write with.

You mustn't correspond

to anyone outside of here.

The books you have with you,

and only if you behave,

will be returned to you.

But don't hope for any others.

One:
25 blows

for every scrap of paper.

Two:
25 for every pen or pencil.

Buttocks thrashed bloody

for every illegal letter

that comes in or goes out.

Turn around.

Take them away.

Sit down, all of you.

How are you?

They beat us to a pulp

and crammed us into a livestock cart.

Us too.

Worst was, most of us

had believed the guards.

They were hoping to regain freedom.

Did you see?

They even brought Carlo Poerio here.

Have you ever met him?

Years ago, in Paris,

in Princess Belgiojoso's salon.

Come and see, Giovanni!

Domenico, sir, you come and see too.

No.

- Want to make the bell ring?

- Give me a coin.

You're throwing bread away?

Shut up, she's my hope

when I get out of here.

She smiled at you!

Since you got your Dante back,

you don't talk to anyone anymore.

It's such a consolation for me

to read these verses again.

Although the book's

in such bad shape.

Would you like to eat with us today?

No, you already know, I'd rather not.

- Forgive me.

- You forgive me, my friend.

I have a bad disposition.

- The gentlemen send you this.

- Thanks a lot!

I sewed the guard's jacket

and he gave me this bread.

- No, thank you.

- Take it. - Thanks.

Domenico, come with me!

Domenico, sir?

The other day Nisco

was put into the infirmary,

his mother told him

to pretend to be sick

so the doctor

could give him this message.

You can hardly read it,

sweat has bleached it,

but we managed to make it out.

There are maneuvers

to bring the French back to Naples.

They're really serious this time.

Ferdinando would be exiled

and Bonaparte would come.

Luciano Murat's name is rumored.

The Neapolitan patriots

aren't sure what to do.

This means that someone

believes this is the path to follow.

The note's addressed to you,

it's your opinion they want.

Right!

The proposal for Murat is crazy.

The new French emperors

are just a bland copy of Napoleon.

Ferdinando must fall

before there can be a King of Italy

and the King of Italy must

be Italian, he must be a Savoy.

What do you think?

I'm here because I believe

in the Republic and democracy.

Don't ask my opinion about crowns.

We're here too, that should be enough

for you to deign an opinion.

Once all liberals,

even those in the North,

moderates or democratic,

monarchists or republicans, everyone,

believed that to found

a modern State in Italy

the initiative

should come from Naples.

When there was talk of the Savoys,

more bigoted than the Bourbons,

no one thought our fate

should be entrusted to them.

Is it worth our suffering

to see the son of that traitor

Carlo Alberto succeed Ferdinando?

What is tiny Piedmont compared

to the great southern territories?

Listen,

it's reality

that hastens the situation.

I argued to make

the Bourbon monarchy constitutional.

I hoped it might lead

the unification process.

And now?

I too am convinced

that the unification of Italy

either comes about shortly,

under the Savoys,

or it will never happen.

Don't drag it out,

the round will pass by soon.

It's decided, the answer is no.

My brother Alessandro wrote:

"Oh Italy, no foreigner

has been generous with you."

May Piedmont be,

forever and always, our North Star.

Keep together.

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