the following, which, having been compiled under the orders of Pius IX.,
may be relied on as strictly accurate. Pietro Leoni had acted as
official attorney to the poor. Well, in 1831, under the pontificate of
Gregory XVI., he was arrested on a charge of being a member of a
political club. He was brought to trial, acquitted, set free, but
deprived of his office, though why I cannot say, unless it was for the
crime of being innocent. To sustain an aged father, a wife and children,
Pietro had to work harder than ever. In 1836 he was again
arrested,--suddenly, without being told for what,--hurried to the Castle
of St Angelo, in the dungeons of which he had to undergo a rigorous
examination, from which nothing could be elicited. He was not released,
however, but kept there, till witnesses could be found or hired. At
length a certain vine-dresser came forward to accuse Leoni. One day,
said the vine-dresser, Pietro Leoni, whom he had never seen till then,
came to his door, and, after a short conversation with him, in the
presence of his sons, handed him a manuscript relating to a _reform
society_, of which, he said, he had been a member for years. The
vine-dresser buried this document at the bottom of a tree in his garden.
The spot was searched, but nothing was found; his strange story was
contradicted by his wife and sons; and the Pontifical Government could
not for very shame condemn him on such evidence; but neither did they
let him go. A full year passed over him in the dungeons of St Angelo. At
last three additional witnesses--(their names never were known)--were
produced against him. And what did they depose? Why, that they had heard
some one say that he had heard Pietro Leoni say, that he (Leoni) was a
member of a secret society; and on this hearsay evidence did the
Pontifical Government condemn the poor attorney to a life-long slavery
in the galleys. We find him ten long years thereafter still in the
dungeons of the Castle of St Angelo, and writing the Pope in a strain
which one would think might have moved a heart of stone. The petition is
printed in the process. It begins,--

"Most holy father, divest yourself of the splendours of royalty,
and, dressed in the garb of a private citizen, cause yourself to be
conducted into these subterranean prisons, where there is buried,
not an enemy of his country, not a violator of the laws, but an
innocent citizen, whom a secret enemy has calumniated, and w