Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers

The spectators being assembled, the umpires and, perhaps, some foreign potentate or his ambassador, seated in the stand above the wall, the grand march in of the players commenced. It was a procession of picked men from the noblest Florentine families. For the Calcio was an aristocratic game. It was not to be played “by any kind of scum: not by artisans nor servants nor ignoble nor infamous men; but by honoured soldier men of noble birth, gentlemen, and princes.” The ages of the players ranged from eighteen to forty-five, and they were all well-built, athletic men. They wore light shoes, long hose, doublet and cap, and their costumes were of the most splendid material – velvet, silk, cloth of gold or silver – for were not the brightest eyes of the city to watch the game? Not only did each side have its own colours, but the players had also to be dressed in the same material.

The march was opened by the trumpeters and drummers. Then came the Runners, going in couples, and chequer fashion: a red, say, behind a white, and vice versâ. The Runners were followed by nine more drummers preceding the standard-bearers, each dressed in the colours and bearing the flag of his side. Finally appeared the Spoilers, the Half-Backs bearing the ball, and the Backs.

After making the round of the field the procession, at the sound of a single trumpet-blast, split up into its component parts. Trumpeters, drummers, referees, standard-bearers, placed themselves at the tents of their respective sides; the Runners divided up into their companies of five and faced each other in the centre of the field; the Spoilers placed themselves at a distance of 13½ metres behind the Runners and 9 metres from each other; the Half-backs 10½ metres behind the Spoilers and 12 metres from each other; the Backs again 10½ metres in the rear of the Half-backs and 17½ metres from each other.

A second trumpet blast, and the serving-men retired from the field; a third, and the game began.

The Ball-bearer (Pallaio), in a parti-coloured dress formed of the colours of both sides, threw the ball with great force against a marble sign let into the middle of the wall on the right-hand side of the field. It rebounded between the two ranks of the Runners, who immediately rushed towards it, acting, however, not independently, but in their companies.

The company of Runners which had possessed itself of the ball began, of course, to work it with their feet towards the opposite goal. Now came the turn of the Spoilers, of whom the two nearest left their stations and ran obliquely at the advancing Runners, hustling them and endeavouring to get the ball from them and pass it to their own Runners, who were hovering near.

The Runners and the Spoilers worked the ball forward with their feet; the Hitters (Half-backs and Backs) were allowed, nay, as their name implies encouraged, to use their hands.

If the Runners succeeded in taking the ball past the Spoilers, they had to face the onset of two Half-backs, who, if they got the ball, would probably pitch it clear over the heads of the players to the Half-back on the opposite side. This was considered very diverting play, and was much appreciated by the onlookers.

Having pierced the lines of the Spoilers and Half-backs, the Runners found themselves opposed by one of the Backs. The Backs were the strongest men on the field, as, being placed so far apart, they were obliged to act separately.

The ball was generally knocked, not kicked, over the goal. When this happened the two sides changed places on the field; the winning side marching to its new position with flag unfurled and waving, the losers with furled flag and lowered staff.

Such is a diagram – a mere diagram, though a correct one – of the Florentine Calcio. Its connection with Football evidently lies, to adapt an expression from the vocabulary of folk-lore, in the fundamental formula: to send a ball through a goal without the aid of an instrument. But this formula developed differently in England and in Florence. The traditions of the Florentines were military. Their youths were trained to war from boyhood upward: they were accustomed to act in bands. Has anyone ever noticed the truly military spirit in which Dante continually combines the souls into bands, schiere, moving and acting in unison? The remembrance of the disposition of the Roman army, too, with its close and extended ranks, still lingered amongst them. Add to this that they were a thoroughly artistic people, devoted to spectacular effects and cunning in the planning of them, and we at once perceive the cause of the radical difference between this most interesting game of ancient Florence and the English Football.

Those were the times when Florentines penetrated either as merchants or exiles, and generally as both combined, into all parts of the Peninsula and of Europe; and they took their games with them. Matteo Strozzi’s sons, one of whom was Filippo, the famous founder of the great Strozzi Palace, more than once beg their mother to put balls in with linen, etc., which she constantly despatched from Florence to her exiled family, these balls being probably for the most energetic game of Pallone, still played throughout Tuscany.

They took the Calcio with them too, just as the English take their football, cricket or tennis. Thus Tommaso Rinuccini, living at Lyons, writes in his memoirs that: “When Henry III., King of Poland, after the death of Charles IX. his brother, left Poland for France in 1575 to take possession of the kingdom, he passed through Lyons in France. And the Florentines living in that city played before him a Calcio, in which all the Florentine nobles took part, as it was their custom to do. And they sent Pierantonio Bandini and Pierfrancesco Rinuccini, two extremely handsome gentlemen and tall, both Florentines (who were the standard-bearers in the Calcio), to invite his Majesty, in the name of their native city, to be present at the celebration. King Henry accepted the invitation and was a spectator of the game. When he spoke to them before they left his presence he asked whether all Florentines were as tall and handsome as they.”

It would be, indeed, well for the physical development of modern Florentines should the Calcio enter again into the ordinary life of the youth of the city.

ELBA

A MONTH IN ELBA

I

An atmosphere as invisible as that of Egypt, a sea of the clearest amethyst and emerald, merging into sapphire in the distance, and jealously guarded by a series of frowning headlands, now grey, now black, now red, with heart and veins of iron, that enclose miniature beaches and mysterious grottos where the water sleeps peacefully in the arms of its lord; and within, a sea of vines embracing the feet of mountains clothed with pines, with lentisks that have watched the passage of centuries, with bushes of white heather taller than a tall man, with glaucous agaves, rigid and puritanical, with prickly pears, fantastic and repellent; the very air of a voluptuous quality: soft, velvety even, with the mingled odours of an infinite number of aromatic plants and herbs, sweet with the white amaryllis that fringes the sea. Such, in broad outlines, is the island for which Etruscans, Romans, Genoese, Pisans, Saracens, Spanish, French and English have fought, in which Victor Hugo was nursed into life, in which Napoleon was caged; a land of wine and iron, glowing with strength and passion.

A land of perfect peace and infinite possibilities does this island seem as one drifts along the coast, watching the fish dart below the keel of the boat, rounding the islets that look as though they had skipped from the mainland in play and were intent on their own reflection in the water; as one swims into grottos purple-roofed, over water of the purest aquamarine, and looks through the narrow opening across the twinkling sea outside; or, as one walks through miles of vineyard in which grow the choicest grapes, or climbs up to the iron quarries, where the mountain is being simply dug away.

Yet, the deepest impression made on the mind of a visitor to Elba is not so much that of the future prosperity of the island, for all its resources, as of its past importance. Almost every peak bears its ruined castle; headland after headland was fortified in the Middle Ages by Powers jealously tenacious of their rights; the iron quarries, now comparatively little known, were worked unremittingly by the ancients, witness Virgil’s well-known line:

“Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis;”

and witness the iron slag that proves the existence in Roman times of furnaces for refining the ore; the very wine, delicious as it is, is no longer the great source of wealth it was some years ago, partly on account of the phylloxera which has lessened the production, partly because the customs-war between Italy and France stopped its export to the country which afforded the most profitable market, partly for the reason that the peasants are primitive enough to insist on selling the unadulterated juice of the grape to a public that prefers manufactured wines.

All this adds to the sense of repose; the past is so long past, the future seems still so far off. And meanwhile the peasants and the small proprietors prune their vines and shell their almonds, and use their old-fashioned lamps, and dance barefoot on festas to the music of a concertina, either at their own houses or at the palazzo of a neighbouring large proprietor. They give each other nicknames, which gradually supplant the surnames, descending from father to son after the fashion of primitive times. Thus a man who thought a good deal of himself was called il Papa (the Pope), whereupon his sons and sons’ sons are called Papini (little Popes); a man noted for his patience was called Giobbe (Job) and his children are known as Giobbetti; a man who once wore a coat that was too long for him has ever since been called the Doctor; another from a bad stroke at bowls rejoices in the name of Scatterer (il Baracone), and one who should now call him John would be scarcely understood. They intermarry largely. They troop from all parts of the island on donkeys and diminutive horses to the festas of the various miraculous Madonnas, not omitting to go down to the nearest beach on the eve of a festa and wash according to traditional custom. They preserve local differences and hostilities that tell of difficult intercommunication: thus a Lacona man will tell you that the men of Capoliveri,[10 - That Capoliveri was a Roman town seems to be proved by the manuscript of a Goth, quoted as travelling in these parts in about 530 A.D. He tells us that the right name of the place is Caputliberum, for that Roman exiles deported to this village, without any difficulty, obtained the liberty of walking outside the walls within the jurisdiction of the city. It must have been a sort of Domicilio Coatto. The author of the manuscript is called by Ninci and Lambardi Celeteudo or Celteuso.] whose township he can see perched on a hill to the east, are “danniferi; what they have with their eyes they must also have with their hands,” he adds, as he picks up a bunch of unripe grapes, wantonly broken off and thrown away. No one but a Capoliveri man would commit damage of that sort.

The earliest among the buildings that tell of the past importance of the island is the Castle of Volterraio. A ride along the hills overhanging the gulf of Portoferraio brings us to the foot of the precipice on which it stands, rising, with the sheer rocks that form part of the building, out of a tangled mass of low growth, from which, every now and again springs a graceful wild olive. By only one path is the place accessible. Path is a courtesy title. The way up is a scramble, often on hands and feet, up smooth, slippery, slanting masses of jasper rock in whose crevices flourish rounded, hedgehog-like cushions of the most cross-grained thorns. Ten minutes’ climb brings us to an ancient wall with a gap, where was once a gate, and a strongly built, vaulted guard-house. Up again, over short grass this time, and we come to the low, narrow doorway at the top of a steep flight of steps sheer down on one side, without any trace of railing. At the bottom of the steps a hole in the ground gives evidence that an upright there supported a further defence of some sort. Inside, where armed men fought, a couple of fig-trees flourish greatly, and the ground is a series of heaps of grass-covered débris that sound strangely hollow as one stamps on them. The sentinel’s round within the castellation of the walls is still intact. At some little distance on each side of the tower, which forms the south-eastern corner, it stops short, and deep holes for uprights in the parapet show clearly that a drawbridge on each side enabled the defenders to isolate the tower and fight to the last gasp. At one place it widens out. A number of men could make a stand there; the inner wall is pierced with many loopholes, and these all converge on one place: the steps leading up to the wall, and the well at the bottom of them. One can creep too, into a number of dungeon-like recesses in the walls, or clamber through a hole down a steeply inclined ledge of rock to a little underground chamber having a recess like a rough bed on one side, lighted by a hole in the rock that forms the roof, and another in that which looks over the gulf. A small opening, defended by an outwork, puts this underground cell into communication with the outer world; but the outwork is evidently a comparatively late structure.

All this is absolutely lonely, save for a few goats that now and again make their way up, and the falcon that screams and wheels overhead. Once it was the storehouse of the Etruscans of Volterra, who, drawing iron, copper[11 - The copper mines, mentioned by Aristotle, are no longer open. That they were worked by the Etruscans was first proved by Raffaello Foresi, when, in 1865, he made known the discovery of various bronze objects. These were found by one of the Foresi peasants near the entrance into the ancient copper mines above Portoferraio, together with a mould for receiving the melted bronze. Finely-worked bronze ornaments were found about the same time during an investigation made at Foresi’s suggestion, associated in a sepulchral cavern with skulls of Etruscans and Ligurians.] and other minerals from the island, built the Volterraio as a defence for themselves and their treasures in case of sudden assault. It has stood many sieges, has heard the oaths of many nations in Roman and Mediæval times and is now falling to decay; for Turks and Saracens roam the seas no more, and the island it helped so long to guard has become part of a united peaceful kingdom.

Quite the most curious proofs of the ancient importance of the island are to be found between the little villages, of S. Ilario and St. Piero di Campo, overlooking the southern coast. We are in a granite country from which the stone is exported for sculptural and architectural purposes. No need of quarries to obtain it, though; it lies scattered over hill and valley in huge blocks, as though some prehistoric giant had dumped cart-load after cart-load with the idea of raising some enormous building, but had been cut off by a god in the midst of his operations. They have a certain defiant air about them, still, those masses of granite. They shrug a shoulder at you from under the houses, they poke out a rounded back in the very middle of the church wall, they lie across your path in winking, slippery masses, nourishing thorns in their bosoms on to which you may fall, and then, if you look up suddenly, you may see one that has climbed on to the shoulders of his brethren and with feathered cap stuck awry, and big empty eye-sockets, is grinning down at you with unholy, sardonic mirth. Every little fold in the hillside, shut in strangely from the outside world, has its chestnut grove and its running stream; but even here there is something uncanny, and no peasant will put his lips to that water without making the sign of the cross above it; he fears he may become possessed by the spirits that haunt it. It is curious, however, that if he takes the water in a glass he considers himself free from the danger.

In the midst of all this weird desolation rise two Roman buildings at some little distance from each other; one a spacious ancient church, the other a square tower. They are built of beautifully hewn blocks of granite, oblong or square, but mostly square, at the surface, put together without mortar. The door of the church is low and square, not arched; its face is pierced just under the roof (now fallen in) by a rounded window formed of smaller slabs of stone, also without mortar, in which a bell formerly hung, but which does not give one the idea of having been built for a belfry. The building is rather oblong than square, and was apparently divided into two unequal portions by a low granite wall, which does not seem to have much in common with an altar-railing – it is too much towards the middle of the church and appears to have been altogether too strong a construction. The apse is extraordinarily shallow, pierced by three of the loopholes that at long intervals serve as windows to the church. There are no traces of pillars.

At some distance from the church the granite rocks have piled themselves into a peak that looks straight over the underlying plain to the sea beyond. On this peak stands the tower. “The solidity of its walls,” writes that most conscientious, but not very critical historian, Giuseppe Ninci,[12 - “Storia dell’Isola dell’Elba.” Giuseppe Ninci. Portoferraio, 1815.] “the smallness of its rooms, the great difficulty of access, show it to have been one of those terrible prisons in which pined for long years those unfortunates who, exiled from their native land, were sent off to the islands.” If prisoners were put there, it must have been to starve, and for that they might surely have been shut up in some place which would cost less to build. There is but one side on which it can be approached, and even there a man must twice grasp the edge of the rock above his head and draw himself up by sheer force of biceps before he reaches the base of the tower. Once there he discovers that he must repeat the operation, for there is no door, only a window above his head, which he can reach by stretching up his arms. The tower consists of two low rooms one above the other, with walls a metre thick. Was it really a prison, or was it not rather a watch-tower, or a tower of refuge? Otherwise what should it be doing there all alone on its granite base? Was there once a Roman or an Etruscan city round that large church or temple? Yet, the huge granite blocks look as though man had never attempted to oust them for his advantage. Wanted, an archæologist’s report before these writings of past history become still further obliterated.

St. Piero di Campo is well worth lingering in for a while on one’s return from San Giovanni. It was always a favourite landing-place for hostile ships, the plain below being fertile, and the gulf sheltered. The castle, therefore, contained everything that could be wanted in case of siege: a church, and a graveyard in addition to the usual means of defence. It is a square, massive building, with but one small entrance. The church is extremely ancient. The roof, low and vaulted, is supported on two short, thick granite columns, one having a roughly carved capital which is well worth study, the other none at all. The walls have been barbarously whitewashed, but in two or three places where the whitewash has been chipped off, there stand revealed the figures of early 15th-century frescoes executed by a Tuscan artist. One or two figures have been laid bare as a matter of curiosity, and it appears probable that the whole church is frescoed in the same way. If so, and the Campesi would undo their barbarism, it would be worth a pilgrimage to see.

II

Surely no city in the world queens it over the waves so completely as does Portoferraio. She rides them imperiously, lifting high the turrets that are her crown and defence; she decks herself in the brightest colours, conscious of her beauty; and sets herself boldly on the very head and front of the dark blue waters that wash her feet or leap up in wrath at her pride, yet never injure her. Genoa is called the Superb, but the epithet rises more spontaneously to the mind on view of the capital of the Island of Elba.

Portoferraio was originally one of those headlands, so characteristic of Elba, that grow out from the mainland on a narrow stalk, and then widen and heighten into rocky peninsulas. It is now, however, an island, for Cosimo I., Duke of Tuscany, cut a moat through the stalk, and severed the peninsula from the mainland. The peninsula consists of two heights, on one of which is the fort known as the Falcone, on the other, that of the Stella; and these are bound together by a lofty wall, within the castellations of which sentinels could walk without descending into the town. Immediately below each fort, a bank of concrete, kept in former times very clean and free from growth, formed a water-shed for the rain which streamed down it into a cistern below. At present the concrete, though still railed in, is quite overgrown, for the city boasts a water-supply brought down from the neighbouring hills. Round the forts are spacious granite-paved squares on which considerable bodies of men could manœuvre; and below cluster the red-roofed, green-shuttered houses, whose inhabitants sleep, in Oriental fashion, through the heat of the day, coming out in the evening to walk among the oleanders of Le Ghiaie– a tiny park above a beach of the whitest gravel (ghiaia) – or to dance with the officers in the new bathing establishment, of which they are so proud. Down again, at the foot of the houses, lies the port, a semi-circle pointed at the southern end by the pink-washed tumble-down offices of the sanitary inspector, at the northern end by the octagonal tower of the convict prison. Soldiers, convicts, “society,” trade, all hive on those two little hills, and the only opening through which workers and drones can pass in and out on the landside is a low-browed gateway, bearing the Medici arms, and overlooking a plank bridge spanning the moat of sea-water. Within the gateway is a wide, open space, through which one passes up the first ramparts of the Falcone, to a wonderful winding tunnel, hewn in the solid rock. This brings one out through another gate, into the flaunting little city. The tunnel is known as La Tromba (the trumpet-shaped), and was the work, as usual, of Cosimo’s engineer.

Portoferraio, Ferraio, the iron city, as it was originally called, dates, at any rate, from Roman times. The name would suggest this, and the fact is abundantly proved by Roman walls, pavements of brick and marble, tombs with inscriptions, skeletons, lamps, etc., coins of consuls and emperors, workmen’s tools, that were unearthed from time to time during the seventeenth century, when excavations were being made for the subterranean cisterns, guard-houses, powder-magazines, halls of every kind that honeycomb the ground.

Towards the end of April, 1548, there arrived in the bay below Portoferraio a fleet bearing one thousand soldiers, three hundred sappers and miners, and the architect John Baptist Camerini. Ferraio was at that time a heap of ancient ruins, but Cosimo I., the merchant Duke of Tuscany, whose coasts lay open to the invasion of the Turks, and whose galleys were continually assailed by pirates, concluded that the best possible points of defence against these redoubtable enemies were Ferraio and Piombino. With a large sum of money, and a very great deal of diplomacy, he persuaded Charles V. (who thought that the same points of defence would be as irritating to the French as to the Turks) to grant him the places. The agreement was hardly concluded when the Duke’s men landed on the little peninsula, quarried the blocks, ready squared to their hands from the Roman villas and walls, made a brick kiln on the coast near by where there was suitable clay, obtained excellent mortar from the stones of the neighbouring hills, and in a fortnight had raised the walls breast high. Cosimo made two visits to the island to inspect the works, living not in Ferraio itself, but in a house on the hillside opposite, that is still known as the Casa del Duca (Duke’s house), and bears on its garden wall a defaced, weather-stained marble bust of Duke Cosimo. The Turks, the French, the Genoese, and the rest of Cosimo’s many enemies were beside themselves with rage. Elba was wasted throughout its length and breadth, the new town – no longer Ferraio, but Cosmopolis – was besieged by mighty fleets, intrigues were obstinately kept up to induce the Emperor to revoke his grant, but the Duke (now Grand Duke) made head against force and intrigue; the town remained in his hands, and still, as witness to his might, bears over its gateways the proud inscription:

templa, moenia, domos, arces, portum,
cosmus florentinorum dux II. a fundamentis
erexit an. MDXLVIII

The port, as made by Cosimo, still remains, but the defences and engineering works completed by him and his successors are now deserted, or have been turned into the convict prison, the three white columns of whose water-gate form a striking feature in a view of the port. The convicts are here allowed to work at various trades. Workshops are provided within the prison walls, and a show-room for the sale of their goods. The government exacts a small royalty on objects sold.

A sentimental interest attaches itself to Portoferraio, as being the place which preserved to mankind a sickly puling infant of the name of Victor Hugo. An epigraph by Mario Foresi, on the walls of the town-hall, commemorates the fact.[13 - qui in portoferraionel MDCCCII fu recato pargolettovittore hugoqui nacque la sua parolache più tardi lava di fuoco sacrodovea correre le vene dei popolie forse tre annivissuti in quest’auracui danno atomi il ferro ed il mareafforzando il corpo infermiccio di luiserbavanol’orgoglio dei suoi natali alla franciala gloria del suo nome al secoloall’umanitaun apostolo e un genio immortale.]

Along the shore of that part of the gulf, which lies outside the port, the sea looks as though some eccentric gardener had been laying out garden beds in it, with grassy walks between, and white pyramids at irregular intervals. These are the saline, where the government makes salt (not very good salt either) for its subjects. It produces about 1,152 tons a year, which it sells at the rate of 3d. per pound. Truly a government salt monopoly is not a pleasant thing for peasants, who can get salt alone as a condiment for their soup of cabbages and beans, or their mess of maize flour.

Ferraio, then, takes its name from the principal product of the island, but the mines are not near the town; they are on the eastern coast, at Rio and at Cape Calamita (Loadstone Cape).

Rio, like all other villages in this part of the world, consists of two parts: Rio Alto, whose streets are merely a succession of stairs; and Rio Marina, a modern town, where the mines are. The prevailing colour in Rio Marina is red: red are the hills that shut out the fresh north breezes from the town, red is the sea where the steamers lie off to be loaded, red are the four piers where the trucks go up and down, red the houses, with their curtains, stairs, and furniture. This red ochrous ore is associated, as one ascends the mountain, with the massive and micaceous varieties of hæmatite; so that while one sees red cliffs towering on one side, and solid knobs and blocks of iron, almost native, on the other, one walks over roads that glitter and sparkle like running water, and are almost as slippery as ice.

“And Seius, whose eight hundred slaves
Sicken in Ilva’s mines,”

writes Lord Macaulay; thereby showing that he had never been to Rio. For there is no mining properly so-called here; there is no tunnelling, no blasting on a large scale. The men work in the open air, digging away the red earth, blowing away the harder masses with small charges of powder or getting them out with picks. The earth is washed in a large cistern, with a revolving paddle-wheel, that keeps the water in continual motion; and the iron thus separated from the clay is loaded on to the ships without further refining.

At present the mines are farmed out by the Government, and produce about 176,516 tons yearly. The men are paid by piece work, and earn from two francs to four francs a day. Only one set of men is kept. When they are not lading foreign vessels, they dig ore, and make great heaps of it; when they are not digging, they lade. It is evident the place wants development.

At the iron quarries of Cape Calamita, where magnetic iron is obtained, we watched the process of lading. A large English-built steamer had come in, under a Genoese captain, for iron, which it was to exchange for coal at Cardiff. She stood in as near to the shore as was safe, and then anchoring, opened three mouths on each side to receive her food. Come out to her six willing slaves, small boats called laconi, with the most audacious masts and yard-arms one can imagine. They look as though they would rend the clouds and pierce the sky; but it is all bluster; the boats are such helpless creatures that if they are to cross the bay, they must have a steam-tug to pull them. The men in the laconi rest planks on the open lips of the monster that towers above them, and proceed to pour down its six gaping throats an infinite number of small baskets of the red, earthy ore. For four consecutive days they feed her, if the weather be fine, and then she goes off to the northern seas, where laconi are unknown, where the water is rarely motionless, and where steam cranes and puffing engines tell of work done in a hurry. It must be confessed, however, that the Elban method is adorably picturesque. Sea, sky, and hills are glowing in the great calm. The big black ship lies motionless; her crew lounge, her jovial, white-suited captain, so proud of his mahogany-fitted passenger ship that used to go to India, stands watching the ore slide in; the Elbans cluster up the sides of the planks to pass the baskets from one to the other; they talk and laugh, showing glittering white teeth; and they wear hanging red fishermen’s caps, patchwork shirts and bright sashes.

Onward along the coasts from Rio, we come to the ancient town of Portolongone, built along the curve of a fine, natural harbour. Sheer above the town, where the Portolongone women flaunt it along their sea front after mass, in the brightest of dresses, and the most artistic of black or white lace head-veils, rises one of the strongest fortresses of the island. It was built in 1603, to the infinite dismay and disturbance of such small fry as the Florentines, Genoese, and the Pope, by Philip III. of Spain. The approach to it is broad, but very steep; the outer ring of fortifications are a city in themselves; and within, across the inner moat and drawbridge, there are spacious squares, clusters of houses, an interesting church, and the large prisons in which are kept criminals condemned to solitary confinement. The prisons we cannot enter, but let us sit for a while in the chaplain’s cool, brick-paved room, sipping the country wine and breaking the long, curled strips of pastry which his hospitable womenfolk have heaped on the table, and listen to what he has to tell us of his charges.

“No,” he says, “they none of them live long, once they come in here; they go mad or fall into consumption, and so die if they have not succeeded in committing suicide first. We have to look out sharply to prevent that. A man managed to do it, though, about a month ago. He tore his shirt into strips and made a slip-knot for his neck, climbed, no one knows how, to the grate in the middle of the deep window-hole, and tied the end of the noose there, bound his own hands together somehow or other, and then kicked away the stool he had been standing on. When he felt himself strangling, he struggled to get free, but his hands were fast, and he only succeeded in pulling the noose tighter and tighter. He was quite dead when they took him down. Outside the prison are a number of cells open to the air, closed by iron gates. You can see them down there.” We were walking about outside by this time, where the convicts not in solitary confinement are building the new prisons. “Every prisoner has an hour’s turn in one of those open-air cells once a day, guards pacing outside the gates the whole time.

“Their food? Well, yes, as you say, it is clean, savoury, and well-cooked” – we had been peeping into the kitchens as we came along – “but they have a very small allowance; a plate of soup given half at midday and half in the evening (vegetable soup, with pasta in it) and two loaves, not much bigger than rolls, of white bread. It is piteous to see how a stout well-built man dwindles away on this régime. The men who are at work buy extras with their wages. Those who wear chains from ankle to wrist were sentenced under the old penal code. When they go to bed they are chained to the wall. Chains are abolished by the new code.

“The prison consists of two storeys of cells, running down each side of a central corridor that extends up to the roof. Communication with the cells of the upper storey is obtained by an iron balcony which runs the length of the building at the height of the first storey. All the cell doors open towards the inner end of the prison, where an altar has been set up.