the bridle until he has fairly brought the
horse's head aside even to the shoulder  â€“ and
yet still progressing downward.

The hour for our admission into the prison
having arrived, we presented our order,
which seemed a mere matter of form, as our
visit had been evidently announced beforehand.
As Francesco Madiai was in the
infirmary, we were conducted first over other
parts of the prison, in which every prisoner
is not only confined separately, but does his
work and takes his exercise separately. Each
man is put to the work which he followed
before his committal, so that, as each cell was
opened, we saw hatters, carpenters, weavers,
and even blacksmiths, at work. The cells
were all clean and well ventilated, a separate
cell being usually provided for each, so that
except in very rare cases no prisoner sleeps
in his workshop. The diet was much the
same as they would have been used to
outside, while a portion of the produce of extra
labour was permitted to be laid out in
extra delicacies, thus affording this first
incentive to even the least impressionable of
rational beings.

Long corridors ran throughout the building
with these cells on each side of them, and at
the central spot was a small square space,
where a crucifix is set up and the mass
performed, so that care is taken to give to all
the prisoners the comfort of religious services,
except the unfortunate Madiai, whose
deprivation in this respect is a severe, though
inevitable, aggravation of their sufferings.
The refusal of their Bible and other devotional
books is an unnecessary, cruel, and dangerous
feature in their solitary confinement.

We found Francesco in a comfortable room of
the infirmary, and the exemption which his
illness procured him from prison discipline and
prison dress, along with the hopes of a speedy
release which he seemed to entertain, gave
him a more cheerful air than we afterwards
found in his unfortunate wife. We had a
long conversation with him in French, this
language being adopted at his own request, in
order that the governor and doctor – who, I
conclude, had been ordered to be present –
might hear it.

We did not feel ourselves bound to alter on
this account what would otherwise have been
the tenor of our conversation. As we had
come with no intention of embittering his
mind against the powers that be, no interruption
was offered by either of those present.
Nothing could be more pleasing than the
whole conversation and manner of the poor
prisoner. His references to Scripture, which
one naturally looked for in one whose love
for it was his whole crime and must form
his whole consolation, were frequent. But
all such quotations were perfectly free from
cant or affectation, and seemed to be but
the utterings of his heart.

He was evidently much cheered by our
visit, and his evenness of spirit and noble
calmness seeraed to make an impression, even
on the governor of the prison.

The route to the prison of Lucca is over
much more beaten ground. Sparing you,
therefore, as we rested at Pisa, all raptures
over the unequalled grouping of the leaning
tower, the Cathedral, and the Baptistery, in
one noble space, we will invite you to enter
the "Ergastolo" at Lucca. The arrangements
of the prison are similar, though in
some respects inferior, to those at Volterra,
but it alone contains female as well as male
prisoners. The proportion of the former
throughout Tuscany is very small – under
fifty females, to upwards of two thousand
males.

We found poor Rosa suffering from headache,
depressed in spirits, still liable to pain
from her old spinal complaint, and, after
repeated disappointments, unwilling to admit
of hope. In her odious striped prison dress,
with her hair cut to the prison regulations,
and a cotton handkerchief over her head,
those who had known her in her happier
days would with difficulty have recognised
her now. She was, however, well supported
from within; though she spoke of her arrest
as having come upon her like a thunder-
clap. Her chief anxiety seemed to be to
conceal her own sufferings from her husband,
and to have more certainty as to the state
of his health, shattered as she knew it to be.

She had received visits from two remarkable
personages—no less than the Grand Duchess
and the Archbishop. How so exalted a
personage as the former could have visited
her in her cell, and for such an offence, without
such a visit resulting in a pardon, I am
at a loss to conceive.

Nor is it less singular that one charged
with, and pronounced guilty of "Open
impiety in the way of proselytizing," should
have been twice requested by the archbishop
to "pray for him."

Having given a temperate and scrupulously
unexaggerated account of the present position
of these unfortunate persons, we may with
greater confidence solicit attention to the
following statement, which should strike a
chill on every heart, including even the hearts
of their oppressors. It is our firm belief that if
their present sentence be carried out, or even
if their present punishment be continued much
longer, their lives will be sacrificed. Time
will show how far we are correct in our
view of the present state of their health.
We have done our duty in testifying to what
we saw and know – the awful responsibility
must rest with others.

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