while making professions of friendship, or even
coming forward as a witness for the defence,
contrive the condemnation of his enemy, his
professional rival, or any person whom he might
desire to see imprisoned. The greater number of
the priests, bishops, and archbishops, were
members of this camarilla, and they had in it
unlimited power, which they sometimes used to
procure the release of men heavily charged. The
judges, though strong partisans of the king,
often shrunk from conviction, but were forced
to convict, or be dismissed.

Of my own trial, the result was my condemnation
to death. Believing the sentence to be
a form only, I smiled until my eyes fell on my
father and my sister, who were weeping bitterly
as they looked at me. Then a chill and a mortal
paleness came over me, my lips were dry and my
eyes downcast. " What ails you?" asked a fellow
prisoner, shaking my arm, and I recovered
courage. I looked at my father and sister with a
gesture indicating that the capital sentence was
but a form. They understood me and were
relieved. But they were not allowed to accompany
me to the prison, whither I went bound more
tightly than before, with an additional cord
fastened to my handcuffs. The number of
gendarmes was doubled, and four men with four
large lamps marched beside me. My companions
were less cheerful than I when they saw me thus
carried out among the sbirri.

I was set apart in a solitary condemned cell,
furnished with a dim lamp and a small cross on
the table, a little stool, and a straw mattress.
Still I believed that all was form, but my heart
sank when I overheard words spoken by one
sentinel to another. I knew those sentinels,
had gossiped with them, and given them almost
daily the cigar or sweetmeat they enjoyed, but
could not afford to buy out of their pay of
twopence a day. Now they avoided me, allowed no
one else to approach me, but frequently looked
through the bars of my cell to see that I was
safe. " Poor fellow," said one of them when so
looking, " he is to be beheaded." I could not
avoid an exclamation, which, being taken for a
question, was replied to. "Yes, the scaffold is
ordered, the religious societies are invited to the
funeral, and the executioner is told to be ready
at any moment." That was the removal of all
hope as the night gathered about me. While I
grieved, the dim light of the lamp flashed up,
lighting the brass crucifix beside it, and was
extinguished. Finding the room dark, and not
seeing me, for I had withdrawn into a corner of
my cell, a sentinel gave the alarm, and the silence
of the night was broken by the hurried tramp of
soldiers and turnkeys, coming— some from above,
some from below, but all towards me. They found
me safe, lighted my lamp again, and left me. I
suffered the griefs of the condemned, for whom
there is no more hope in this world, until a strong
hope against hope took possession of me.

The next day, a soldier, probably the sentinel
by whom I had been misled, slipped through
my bars a paper to say that the scaffold had
been erected to strike terror on the town,
but that there would be no execution. Three
days afterwards I was informed that my sentence
had been commuted to nineteen years' imprisonment
in the dungeons of Procida.

Hitherto, as I had given myself up to justice,
I had been confined apart from common criminals
in the fortress of Reggio. With my change
of sentence, came an order for removal to the
prison of St. Francis, before starting for Procida.
This prison consisted of two stories. I was
placed on the ground floor, nine feet under
ground. It was paved with large flags that were
never dry. When the south-east wind blew, this
place became so clammy with wet that the soles
of our boots or shoes stuck to the floor as we
walked. The air was heavy and oppressive, and
although the place was lighted by three large
windows, guarded with a double row of bars,
yet it was positively darkened with the damp
mist raised by warmth of fire and crowded
human bodies in so moist a place, and the
whole mist was poisoned with a pestilential
stench from a closet in one corner of the
room. Prisoners hardened in dirt held their
noses, but the stench then seemed to penetrate
through the pores of the skin. It caused a
constant and intolerable headache. Some prisoners
spat blood, or bled at the nose. Among the
crowd, were some who boasted of contempt
of decency, and who kept their corners of the
prison in a fearful state, attracting the rats,
who on two occasions actually set upon three
sleeping prisoners. A watch had to be established
against them, as against an enemy. Against other
vermin no watch could be set. The greater number
of the prisoners had no shirts, but wore, next
their bodies, foul rags of coarse woollen cloth. I
offered some of my own clothes to a man whose
rags seemed to be most horribly infested. He
said he should be dull if he parted with his
favourite hunting-ground. To another man, I
offered, in vain, money if he would wash his
face. Among our number were three common
criminals: one, a parricide under sentence of
death. Their fate was still doubtful, but their
conduct was so reckless as to strike terror into
the hearts of all. Under their influence were a
dozen filthy wretches, who at night searched the
wallets and boxes of their companions in misery,
and in the day begged alms from us all. No one
had safe possession of his property, or dared
complain when he was robbed. During the night
the keeper came to our cell at intervals, and
tested the soundness of its iron grating, by strokes
with a small iron ruler. The windows were
kept open, day and night, with sentinels outside,
doubled in dark or stormy weather, to prevent
all approach from without. Games were
forbidden by the prison rules, but card-playing was
winked at by the turnkey when he had been
bribed. Strong drink also was smuggled in, now
and then leading to riots, blows, stabs, even
murder. If a quiet prisoner strove to hold himself
aloof from quarrels, his position was a
dangerous one, since the first victims of both sides
were the obnoxious neutrals; nor was the quiet
prisoner discriminated from the noisy, when, to