mned! Condemned to what? To the
galleys. Nor does that bring fully out the iniquity of the sentence. Our
consul in Rome assured me that he had investigated the case, from his
friendship for the colonel, and that the matter stood thus:--The colonel
had engaged a man to do a piece of work, for which he was to receive
five pounds as wages. The work was done, the wages were paid, the man's
receipt was tendered, and the witnesses in whose presence the money had
been paid bore their testimony to the fact. All these proofs were before
Mr Freeborn. Nay, more; the papal tribunal that tried the case was told
that all these witnesses and documents were ready to be produced. And
yet, in the teeth of this evidence, completely establishing the
innocence of Colonel Calendrelli, which, indeed, no one doubted, was the
colonel condemned to the galleys; and when I was in Rome, he was working
as a galley-slave on the high-road near Civita Vecchia, chained to
another galley-slave. This is a sample of the pontifical justice. Take
another case.

The tragedy I am now to relate was consummated during my stay in the
Eternal City. In the town of Macerata, to the east of Rome, it happened
one day that a priest was fired at as he was passing along the street at
dusk. He was not shot, happily;--the ball, missing the priest, sank deep
in a door on the other side of the way. This happened under the
Republic; and the police either could not or would not discover the
perpetrator of the deed. The thing was the talk of the town for a day or
so, and was then forgotten for ever, as every one thought. But no. The
Republic came to an end; back came the pontifical police to Macerata;
and then the affair of the priest was brought up. The prefect had not
been installed in his office many days till a person presented himself
before him, and said, "I am the man who shot at the priest." "You!"
exclaimed the prefect. "Yes; and I was hired to shoot him by----,"
naming three young men of the town, who had been the most active
supporters of the Republic. These were precisely the three young men, of
all others in Macerata, whom it was most for the interest of the Papacy
to get rid of. That very day these three young men were apprehended.
They were at last brought to trial; and will it be believed, that on the
solitary and uncorroborated testimony of a man who, according to his own
confession, was a hired assassin,--and surely I do the man no injustice
if I suppose that,