y bad complexion from the day the Count became my friend.

When once the discontented proceed from words to actions you may
indeed pity them.

A person charged with a political offence summoned before the _Sacra
Consulta_ (for everything is holy and sacred, even justice and
injustice), must be defended by an advocate, not chosen by himself,
against witnesses whose very names are unknown to him.

In the capital (and under the eyes of the French army) the extreme
penalty of the law is rarely carried out. The government is satisfied
with quietly suppressing people, by shutting them up in a fortress for
life. The state prisons are of two sorts, healthy and unhealthy. In
the establishment coming within the second category, perpetual
seclusion is certain not to be of very long duration.

The fortress of Pagliano is one of the most wholesome. When I walked
through it there were two hundred and fifty prisoners, all political.
The people of the country told me that in 1856 these unfortunate men
had made an attempt at escape. Five or six had been shot on the roof
like so many sparrows. The remainder, according to the common law,
would be liable to the galleys for eight years; but an old ordinance
of Cardinal Lante was revived, by which, God willing, some of them may
be guillotined.

It is, however, beyond the Apennines that the paternal character of
the Government is chiefly displayed. The French are not there, and the
Pope's reactionary police duty is performed by the Austrian army. The
law there is martial law. The prisoner is without counsel; his judges
are Austrian officers, his executioners Austrian soldiers. A man may
be beaten or shot because some gentleman in uniform happens to be in a
bad temper. A youth sends up a Bengal light,--the galleys for twenty
years. A woman prevents a smoker from lighting his cigar,--twenty
lashes. In seven years Ancona has witnessed sixty capital executions,
and Bologna a hundred and eighty. Blood flows, and the Pope washes his
hands of it. He did not sign the warrants. Every now and then the
Austrians bring him a man they have shot, just as a gamekeeper brings
his master a fox he has killed in the preserves.

Perhaps I shall be told that this government of priests is not
responsible for the crimes committed in its service.

We French have also experienced the scourge of a foreign occupation.
For some years soldiers who spoke not our language were encamped in
our departments. The king