ask the attendance of those gentlemen, and
then informed us that by a strange coincidence
they were all out of Genoa. Of two or three
of them I afterwards learned that they had
never left Genoa, and had never been sent to.
Probably he sent to none of them, because he
was already convinced; but as three hours of
badgering had wearied even him, he now
vanished for a short time, to return accompanied
by the Ispettore, a certain Verga, who,
apparently with the view of intensifying his
natural resemblance to an escaped convict, had
recently had his head shaved. This gentleman
varied the monotony of the proceedings by not
answering a single word to any of the
remonstrances or protestations addressed to him by
my friends: gazing vacantly into space, and
pretending not to see the speaker, or be in any way
aware of a speaker's presence.

When the worthy Signori Ansaldo and Verga
had consulted together for a short time in
whispers, the convict-faced official then, for the
first time, deigned to address us, but not to
look at us. Fixedly regarding the wall over our
heads, he uttered these words: " The lady is
free; the gentleman"—meaning my husband—
"will now be conducted to prison."

We all stared at one another, as only innocent
English people—who will persist at having
notions of legality, reason, and justice, in their
insular brains—can stare, at arbitrary abuse of
power. Everybody eagerly demanded the reason
—as if Italian officials knew the meaning of the
word—the why—the wherefore, at least—the
motive of the imprisonment—the crime of which
the victim was accused. Verga coolly turned to
my husband and said: "There is no occasion to
give any explanation or motive for the arrest; a
Venetian has no right of citizenship in Italy."
To cut short all further discussion he called in
the carabinieri again, informed them that my
husband was their prisoner, and that they were
at once to conduct him to the Carceri di Sant'
Andrea. Then he told us we might depart, and
immediately relapsed into his former ostentatious
unconsciousness of our existence.

As we turned to go away, after shaking hands
over and over again with the victim who was
just as quiet and composed about the matter as
we were agitated and distressed, Dr. P., who
does not understand Italian, and whose face of
blank astonishment at the first arrest, and of
growing disgust and indignation at the
proceedings in the Questura, would have been a
study for Leech, could keep quiet no longer.
"What," whispered he to my brother, who was
mournfully turning away to go— " What, is this
to be the end? Do you mean to say we are to
go away without punishing those two beasts?"
W. directed his attention to the rows of
carabinieri in the hall, by way of reminding him that
he was in a court of justice. He shook his head
sadly, and followed the others out, but twitching
nervously at the sleeves of his coat, and, I
believe, still longing to throw it off, aud seek a
vent for his long pent-up indignation.

And, now, do you wish to know what a
Piedmontese prison is like? Anyhow, my husband
wished to tell you, and one of his few amusements
while there, was to write on scraps of paper a
disjointed letter to you. He trusted to me to
translate and put in order these fragments, but
I was always too tired and low-spirited to
complete the task, and now I copy them here in the
order I received them, thinking they will not be
without interest, considering the circumstances
under which they were written.

                 " Carceri di St. Andrea, October 7.

"Behold me here a prisoner in St. Andrea,
and as I wish to open your eyes a little as to the
virtues of this constitutional government which
you so much admire, I seize the spare moments
when my jailers leave me in peace, to give you
some details of the position of a man imprisoned
without an accusation, and treated like a proved
criminal in this free land, which you Englishmen
admire as it exists only in the columns of your
Times, or our official papers. I trust to my wife
to smuggle my scraps of paper out of the prison,
for she is my only rare visitor (though I only
see her in the presence either of the Procuratore
del Re, or of my jailer), to translate them, and
send them to you in better order than I can
write them.

"If you, who are powerful with your English
press, should see fit to publish any of the details
I send, I should be glad to have been the
instrument of letting your really free countrymen
know that we of the party of action are
not hasty unthinking madmen, when we say
there is no true liberty under the House of
Savoy. If I say House of Savoy still, it is
because, although the Galant'uomo sold his
birthright for the Lombardy mess of potage, and
received Tuscany and Naples as a gift from the
people, he became, alas! no more Italian at
heart than he was before." ....

                                                    " 10th.

"This prison of St. Andrea was once a
monastery, and faint frescoes of saints are still
visible on the walls of some of the corridors and
cells, looking down with dismay on scenes of
suffering, and listening, no doubt, with pious
horror, to the constant imprecations which have
taken the place of holy chants and prayers
within their domain. Even the chapel and
campanile are fitted up as prisons, and in the
belfry are many Sicilian and Neapolitan
Garibaldini, or Aspromontini, as they call them here,
to denote the crime for which they are imprisoned.
From my little grated window I can see
them, and I hear their curses on the government,
and their constant singing of Garibaldi's
hymn." ....

                                                        " 13th.

"In the civil part of the prison, where I am,
there are few cells and few prisoners, most of
whom are men of good position, or family, but
in the criminal part (St. Andrea proper), there
are more than five hundred, at least half of
whom are Garibaldini.

"When I was first arrested, I was kept for
eight days in what may better be called a hole