accommodation; others are _suspected persons_. The number of these
unfortunate beings is not given in the statistical tables, but I know,
from an official source, that in Viterbo, a town of fourteen thousand
souls, there are no less than two hundred.

The want of prison accommodation explains many things, and, among
others, the freedom of speech which exists throughout the country. If
the Government took a fancy to arrest everybody who hates it openly,
there would be neither gendarmes nor gaolers enough; above all, there
would be an insufficiency of those houses of peace, of which it has
been said, that "their protection and salubrity prolong the life of
their inmates."[10]

The citizens, then, are allowed to speak freely, provided always they
do not gesticulate too violently. But we may be sure no word is ever
lost in a State watched by priests. The Government keeps an accurate
list of those who wish it ill. It revenges itself when it can, but it
never runs after vengeance. It watches its occasion; it can afford to
be patient, because it thinks itself eternal.

If the bold speaker chance to hold a modest government appointment, a
purging commission quietly cashiers him, and turns him delicately out
into the street.

Should he be a person of independent fortune, they wait till he wants
something, as, for instance, a passport. One of my good friends in
Rome has been for the last nine years trying to get leave to travel.
He is rich and energetic. The business he follows is one eminently
beneficial to the State. A journey to foreign countries would complete
his knowledge, and advance his interests. For the last nine years he
has been applying for an interview with the head of the passport
office, and has never yet received an answer to his application.

Others, who have applied for permission to travel in Piedmont, have
received for answer, "Go, but return no more." They have not been
exiled; there is no need of exercising unnecessary rigour; but on
receiving their passports, they have been compelled to sign an act of
voluntary exile. The Greeks said, "Not every one who will goes to
Corinth." The Romans have substituted Turin for Corinth.

Another of my friends, the Count X., has been, for years, carrying on
a lawsuit before the infallible tribunal of the _Sacra Rota_. His
cause could not have been a bad one, seeing that he lost and gained it
some seven or eight times before the same judges. It assumed a
deplorabl