st have lived a lifetime in Italy to be able to call up a fairly
vivid picture of the eleventh, twelfth, or thirteenth centuries. One
must have actually seen the grand old castles and gloomy monasteries,
and feudal villages of Calabria and Sicily, where all things are least
changed from what they were, and one should understand something of the
nature of the Italian people, where the original people have survived;
one must try also to realize the violence of those passions which are
ugly excrescences on Italian character even now, and which were once the
main movers of that character.

There are extant many inventories of lordly residences of earlier times
in Italy, for the inventory was taken every time the property changed
hands by inheritance or sale. Everyone of these inventories begins at
the main gate of the stronghold, and the first item is 'Rope for giving
the cord.' Now 'to give the cord' was a torture, and all feudal lords
had the right to inflict it. The victim's hands were tied behind his
back, the rope was made fast to his bound wrists, and he was hoisted
some twenty feet or so to the heavy iron ring which is fixed in the
middle of the arch of every old Italian castle gateway; he was then
allowed to drop suddenly till his feet, to which heavy weights were
sometimes attached, were a few inches from the ground, so that the
strain of his whole weight fell upon his arms, twisted them backwards,
and generally dislocated them at the shoulders. And this was usually
done three times, and sometimes twenty times, in succession, to the same
prisoner, either as a punishment or by way of examination, to extract a
confession of the truth. As the rope of torture was permanently rove
through the pulley over the front door, it must have been impossible not
to see it and remember what it meant every time one went in or out. And
such quick reminders of danger and torture, and sudden, painful death,
give the pitch and key of daily existence in the Middle Age. Every man's
life was in his hand until it was in his enemy's. Every man might be
forced, at a moment's notice, to defend not only his honour, and his
belongings, and his life, but his women and children, too,--not against
public enemies only, but far more often against private spite and
personal hatred. Nowadays, when most men only stake their money on their
convictions, it is hard to realize how men reasoned who staked their
lives at every turn; or to guess, for instance,