Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

settled in his mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper, who

had preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate

sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the

Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he had been

formerly, and that no more money was extractable from his pocket.

He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the postoffice,

and was accustomed to walk into the city with his letters

and post them himself. On a lovely spring day, when the sky was

exquisitely blue, and the sea Divinely beautiful, he took his usual

walk, carrying this letter to the Advocate in his pocket. As he

went along, his gentle heart was much moved by the loveliness of

the prospect, and by the thought of the slowly dying prisoner

chained to the bedstead, for whom the universe had no delights. As

he drew nearer and nearer to the city where he was to post the

letter, he became very uneasy in his mind. He debated with

himself, was it remotely possible, after all, that this sum of

fifty pounds could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so

much, and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty? He was not

a conventionally rich Englishman – very far from that – but, he had

a spare fifty pounds at the banker’s. He resolved to risk it.

Without doubt, GOD has recompensed him for the resolution.

He went to the banker’s, and got a bill for the amount, and

enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have

seen. He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor man,

and that he was sensible it might be a great weakness in him to

part with so much money on the faith of so vague a communication;

but, that there it was, and that he prayed the Advocate to make a

good use of it. If he did otherwise no good could ever come of it,

and it would lie heavy on his soul one day.

Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, when he

heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the staircase, and

Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the room and fell upon his breast, a

free man!

Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own thoughts, the

Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful letter, avowing the

fact, and entreating him to confide by what means and through what

agency he had succeeded so well. The Advocate returned for answer

through the post, ‘There are many things, as you know, in this

Italy of ours, that are safest and best not even spoken of – far

less written of. We may meet some day, and then I may tell you

what you want to know; not here, and now.’ But, the two never did

meet again. The Advocate was dead when the Englishman gave me my

trust; and how the man had been set free, remained as great a

mystery to the Englishman, and to the man himself, as it was to me.

But, I knew this:- here was the man, this sultry night, on his

knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman’s friend; here were

his tears upon my dress; here were his sobs choking his utterance;

here were his kisses on my hands, because they had touched the

hands that had worked out his release. He had no need to tell me

it would be happiness to him to die for his benefactor; I doubt if

Page 109

Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

I ever saw real, sterling, fervent gratitude of soul, before or

since.

He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had enough to

do to keep himself out of trouble. This, and his not having

prospered in his worldly affairs, had led to his having failed in

his usual communications to the Englishman for – as I now remember

the period – some two or three years. But, his prospects were

brighter, and his wife who had been very ill had recovered, and his

fever had left him, and he had bought a little vineyard, and would