no fault to find with the murderer, so he is sent to the galleys. He
is pretty comfortable there; public consideration follows him; sooner
or later he is certain to be pardoned, because the Pope, utterly
indifferent to his crime, finds it more profitable, and less
expensive, to turn him loose than to keep him.

Put the worst possible case. Imagine a crime so glaring, so monstrous,
so revolting, that the judges, who happen to be the least interested
in the question, have been compelled to condemn the criminal to death.
You probably imagine that, for example's sake, he will be executed
while his crime is yet fresh in the popular recollection. Nothing of
the sort. He is cast into a dungeon and forgotten; they think it
probable he will die naturally there. In the month of July, 1858, the
prison of the small town of Viterbo contained twenty-two criminals
condemned to death, who were singing psalms while waiting for the
executioner.

At length this functionary arrives; he selects one out of the lot and
decapitates him. The populace is moved to compassion. Tears are shed,
and the spectators cry out with one accord, "_Poveretto!_" The fact
is, his crime is ten years old. Nobody recollects what it was. He has
expiated it by ten years of penitence. Ten years ago his execution
would have conveyed a striking moral lesson.

So much for the severity of penal justice. You would laugh if I were
to speak of its leniency. The Duke Sforza Cesarini murders one of his
servants for some act of personal disrespect. For example's sake, the
Pope condemns him to a month's retirement in a convent.

Ah! if any sacrilegious hand were laid upon the holy ark; if a priest
were to be slain, a Cardinal only threatened, then would there be
neither asylum, nor galleys, nor clemency, nor delay. Thirty years ago
the murderer of a priest was hewn in pieces in the Piazza del Popolo.
More recently, as we have seen, the idiot who brandished his fork in
the face of Cardinal Antonelli, was beheaded.

It is with highway robbery as with murder. I am induced to believe
that the Pontifical court would not wage a very fierce war with the
brigands, if those gentry undertook to respect its money and
despatches. The occasional stopping of a few travellers, the clearing
out of a carriage, and even the pillaging a country house, are neither
religious nor political scourges. The brigands are not likely to scale
either Heaven or the Vatican.

Thus there is still goo