My Ten Years' Imprisonment

It was now my only consideration how to die like a Christian, and with proper fortitude. I felt, indeed, a strong temptation to avoid the scaffold by committing suicide, but overcame it. What merit is there in refusing to die by the hand of the executioner, and yet fall by one's own? -from Chapter XLVIII In 1820, Italian Silvio Pellico, editor of a literary journal, was arrested as a sympathizer of the revolutionary secret society, The Carbonari. He was sentenced to 15 years in the notoriou...