fuge in the palace of
his master, which was immediately assailed. The prince's own life was
threatened, and he was forced to surrender the fugitive to the people,
who tore Tortona limb from limb, and then, after parading the city
with the mutilated remains, quietly returned to their allegiance.
Niccolo, therefore, caused this castle to be built, which he
strengthened with massive walls and towers commanding the whole city,
and rendered inaccessible by surrounding it with a deep and wide canal
from the river Reno.], and modern civilization has not crossed the
castle moat, to undignify its exterior with any visible touch of the
present. To be sure, when you enter it, the magnificent life is gone
out of the old edifice; it is no stately halberdier who stands on
guard at the gate of the drawbridge, but a stumpy Italian soldier in
baggy trousers. The castle is full of public offices, and one sees in
its courts and on its stairways, not brilliant men-at-arms, nor gay
squires and pages, but whistling messengers going from one office to
another with docketed papers, and slipshod serving-men carrying the
clerks their coffee in very dirty little pots. Dreary-looking suitors,
slowly grinding through the mills of law, or passing in the routine of
the offices, are the guests encountered in the corridors; and all that
bright-colored throng of the old days, ladies and lords, is passed
from the scene. The melodrama is over, friends, and now we have a play
of real life, founded on fact and inculcating a moral.

Of course the custodians were slow to admit any change of this kind.
If you could have believed them,--and the poor people told as many
lies as they could to make you,--you would believe that nothing had
ever happened of a commonplace nature in this castle. The taking-off
of Hugo and Parisina they think the great merit of the castle; and one
of them, seeing us, made haste to light his taper and conduct us down
to the dungeons where those unhappy lovers were imprisoned. It is the
misfortune of memorable dungeons to acquire, when put upon show, just
the reverse of those properties which should raise horror and distress
in the mind of the beholder. It was impossible to deny that the
cells of Parisina and of Hugo were both singularly warm, dry, and
comfortable; and we, who had never been imprisoned in them, found
it hard to command, for our sensation, the terror and agony of the
miserable ones who suffered there. We, happy and secure