the church, had so wrought upon the esteem of the
sacristan, that he now took me to a well, into which, he said, had been
cast the bones of three thousand Christian martyrs. He lowered a lantern
into the well, and assured me that, if I looked through a certain
screenwork there, I could see the bones. On experiment I could not see
the bones, but this circumstance did not cause me to doubt their
presence, particularly as I did see upon the screen a great number of
coins offered for the repose of the martyrs' souls. I threw down some
_soldi_, and thus enthralled the sacristan.

If the signor cared to see prisons, he said, the driver must take him to
those of Ecelino, at present the property of a private gentleman near
by. As I had just bought a history of Ecelino, at a great bargain, from
a second-hand bookstall, and had a lively interest in all the enormities
of that nobleman, I sped the driver instantly to the villa of the Signor
Pacchiarotti.

It depends here altogether upon the freshness or mustiness of the
reader's historical reading whether he cares to be reminded more
particularly who Ecelino was. He flourished balefully in the early half
of the thirteenth century as lord of Vicenza, Verona, Padua, and
Brescia, and was defeated and hurt to death in an attempt to possess
himself of Milan. He was in every respect a remarkable man for that
time,--fearless, abstemious, continent, avaricious, hardy, and
unspeakably ambitious and cruel. He survived and suppressed innumerable
conspiracies, escaping even the thrust of the assassin whom the fame of
his enormous wickedness had caused the Old Man of the Mountain to send
against him. As lord of Padua he was more incredibly severe and bloody
in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been
latest free, and conspired most frequently against him. He extirpated
whole families on suspicion that a single member had been concerned in a
meditated revolt. Little children and helpless women suffered hideous
mutilation and shame at his hands. Six prisons in Padua were constantly
filled by his arrests. The whole country was traversed by witnesses of
his cruelties,--men and women deprived of an arm or leg, and begging
from door to door. He had long been excommunicated; at last the Church
proclaimed a crusade against him, and his lieutenant and nephew--more
demoniacal, if possible, than himself--was driven out of Padua while he
was operating against Mantua. Ecelino re