ns, we noted that the towers were freshly painted and in
perfect repair; and indeed the custodian said frankly enough, on
reappearing, that they were merely built over the prisons on the site of
the original towers. The storied stream of the Bacchiglione sweeps
through the grounds, and now, swollen by the rainfall, it roared, a
yellow torrent, under a corner of the prisons. The towers rise from
masses of foliage, and form no unpleasing feature of what must be, in
spite of Signor P----, a delightful Italian garden in sunny weather. The
ground is not so flat as elsewhere in Padua, and this inequality gives
an additional picturesqueness to the place. But as we were come in
search of horrors, we scorned these merely lovely things, and hastened
to immure ourselves in the dungeons below. The custodian, lighting a
candle, (which ought, we felt, to have been a torch,) went before.

We found the cells, though narrow and dark, not uncomfortable, and the
guide conceded that they had undergone some repairs since Ecelino's
time. But all the horrors for which we had come were there in perfect
grisliness, and labelled by the ingenious Signor P---- with Latin
inscriptions.

In the first cell was a shrine of the Virgin, set in the wall. Beneath
this, while the wretched prisoner knelt in prayer, a trap-door opened
and precipitated him down upon the points of knives, from which his body
fell into the Bacchiglione below. In the next cell, held by some rusty
iron rings to the wall, was a skeleton, hanging by the wrists.

"This," said the guide, "was another punishment of which Ecelino was
very fond."

A dreadful doubt seized my mind. "Was this skeleton found here?" I
demanded.

Without faltering an instant, without so much as winking an eye, the
custodian replied, "_Appunto_."

It was a great relief, and restored me to confidence in the
establishment. I am at a loss to explain how my faith should have been
confirmed afterwards by coming upon a guillotine--an awful instrument in
the likeness of a straw-cutter, with a decapitated wooden figure under
its blade--which the custodian confessed to be a modern improvement
placed there by Signor P----. Yet my credulity was so strengthened by
his candor, that I accepted without hesitation the torture of the
water-drop when we came to it. The water-jar was as well preserved as if
placed there but yesterday, and the skeleton beneath it--found as we saw
it--was entire and perfect.

In the adjoi