ld me that this was wisely said. I
led the way at once to the cell.

CHAPTER IV. THE MINISTER SAYS YES.

The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman
appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister
start. The face that confronted him would, in my opinion, have taken any
man by surprise, if he had first happened to see it within the walls of
a prison.

Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy
Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the Madonna,
among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited to one
changeless and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be believed when I
say that the personal appearance of the murderess recalled that type.
She presented the delicate light hair, the quiet eyes, the finely-shaped
lower features and the correctly oval form of face, repeated in hundreds
on hundreds of the conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to
allude. To those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have
here written is undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily
observation of all classes of criminals, extending over many years, has
considerably diminished my faith in physiognomy as a safe guide to the
discovery of character. Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt,
firmly sustained by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the
vilest wretches ever placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he
was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even
the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and
gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road.
Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity
betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the
near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of residence.
I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest laborers (whose
only crime was poverty) employed by the parish!

Having instructed the female warder to leave the room--but to take care
that she waited within call--I looked again at the Minister.

Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken, he
justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still distressed, he was
now nevertheless master of himself. I turned to the door to leave him
alone with the Prisoner. She called me back.

"Before this gentleman tries to convert me," she said, "I want you to
wait