from the prison, written by stealth, a few words
at a time, and hidden away at the sound of the
jailer's approach. Of course they form no
connected narrative; but I have sent them, because,
coming from a source you cannot doubt, they
may, as my husband says, serve to show you what
lies beneath the smoother constitutional surface
here. Numbers of the poor Aspromontini are
still paying the penalty of putting their trust in
princes, rather than principles; and the Italian
papers are full of sickening accounts of their
sufferings from hunger, vermin, and disease.

As even the Giudice Istruttore did not scruple
to attribute my husband's imprisonment to
Rattazzi, I felt sure that when his ministry was
overthrown, my husband would soon be liberated. All
I had then to struggle against, was the carelessness,
red-tapeism, and neglect of the Jacks in
office. My time was spent in running about
from the Corte d'Assisie where the Procuratore-
Generale was, to the office of the Procuratore
del Re in the Palazzo Ducale, and in worrying
those individuals to that degree that it became
their interest to get rid of a prisoner whose
wife was such an intolerable bore. At last, the
Procuratore del Re informed me that it was
useless to teaze him any more, as his part had
long been done; that all that now remained was
for the Procuratore-Generale to read the
processo, as it was necessary for him to declare
that there was nothing against my husband before
the order of release could be signed. You must
understand that the thing they dignify by the
title of processo, is simply a collection of
documents stitched together, consisting of the
statement of the Questore as to why he thought
proper to arrest the prisoner, the evidence
against him (when there is any) in the shape of
sequestrated letters, or papers, either written by,
or supposed to implicate the accused, the
minutes of his answers to the interrogations of the
Giudice Istruttore, &c. The whole of this matter
is kept private, and only given to the advocate
who (in case the affair is sent to trial) acts
against the prisoners. The counsel for the
prisoner is neither shown these papers, nor
allowed to be present at any of the examinations
of his client, which take place previously to
the trial. On hearing that the reading over of
this processo was all that remained to be done,
of course I rushed away to teaze and badger
the old Procuratore-Generale once more. I am
sure the poor old gentleman will long remember
me. Imagine to yourself a feeble tottering
old man, wearing a scanty shabby dressing-gown
of a very undignified cut, and a blue velvet
skull-cap very much the worse for wear,
ruthlessly badgered every day, at breakfast and
after breakfast, at dinner and after dinner,
until I could wring from him the promise that
he would finish reading the processo. In vain
he feebly stormed and bewailed by turns: "My
good lady, come again next week."—"No! I will
come every day, and give you no rest till you do
my husband justice."—"Madame, you insult the
majesty of the law?"—"There is no majesty in
a law that confines a man seventy-four days in
prison without telling him of what he is
accused."—"My good lady there were very grave
suspicions."—"Read the papers, then, and see
whether the suspicions are not cleared up."—
"Madame, I will read, but my eyes are old, there
are a great many intercepted letters among the
papers, some of them in very illegible
handwriting. You must now go away and be quiet
and patient for a week."—"I will not be quiet
for a single day. I will come every day and
worry you as I do now."—"Per Dio! I will tell
the servant not to admit you."—"Then I will go
to the Corte d'Assisie, which is public, and where
you cannot keep me out."—"Signora! Signora!
do you want to be the death of me?"—"I want
justice for my husband, and I will never let you
rest till I get it"—and so on, until at last the poor
old Commendatore (very unlike the Commendatore
in Don Juan) was compelled to say, "Come,
then, to-morrow, in Heaven's name, and an
answer, good or bad, you shall have!"

The next day the old deceiver, who, as I
learned afterwards, did not try his eyes by
reading the papers at all, but handed them
over to an inferior to read, met me with a smiling
face, saying: "All is finished now, signora;
if you go, to-morrow, to the Procuratore del Re,
he will sign the order of release."-"Why to-morrow,
if all is finished to-day?" "Eh, signora,
to-day is a festa! don't be so impatient,
your husband has been seventy-five days in
prison, surely he can be seventy-six!"—"Justice
can be done on a festa, signor," said I, and
away I ran to the office of the Procuratore del
Re. I found him with the paper lying by him
ready for signature. " Sign it at once, signor,"
I said; " I must have it to-day."—"Oh, signora!
you see by this that there is no difficulty of my
making," said he, signing the order, and handing
it to me; " but——" "But what?"—"But that
paper is only signed by me, and the Giudice Istruttore."
—"Well, you are the judicial authorities;
you yourself told me that your signature was all
that the law required."—"Very true, yet, if you
show that order to the jailer, you will find he
will not set him free."—" What! he will refuse
to recognise the judicial authorities of the
country?"—"The fact is, signora, there is an
order from the Ministry of the Interior forbidding
the release." This seemed to me too
infamous. Forbidding the judges to release a
man they have declared innocent! " Impossible!"
said I, rashly.

The procuratore quietly put into my hand a
letter, dated from Turin, and signed by the
Marquis d'Afflitto, the prefect of Genoa. I
read, to my astonishment, the order desiring
the procuratore, in case the detenuto V. should
be found innocent, to detain him in prison, alla
disposizione del ministero dell' interno! For a
moment the words seemed to swim before my
eyes, but then the thought struck me like a
flash of light—but there is no minister of the
interior now! Rattazzi has fallen, D'Afflitto will
never dare to perpetrate this infamy with no one
in power to back him! I snatched the order out
of the procuratore's hand, and was running