Extract 4.—Visit to St. Elmo.

Saturday, 27th.—We went to St. Elmo. You know from pictures that the fortress is built on a rock, three sides of which shelve steeply down; the fourth merges into the hill behind, still standing somewhat higher than the hill.

From the ramparts you see the whole of Naples like a map spread out. The huge walls of the fortress, growing straight out of the rock, look imposing enough; but none of us had an idea, till we were there, that they form only the fourth étage as it were of a four-storied building. we were taken about the great square which they enclose, with its barrack buildings, its mounds of shells, its great guns and big mortars. When we had seen the top part, which covers an immense space, they asked us if we would like to see the covered batteries. They opened a large gate in the middle of the enclosed square, and with a lantern we began to descend a wide paved road, almost as steep as a staircase. When we reached the lower level we found ourselves among immense tunnels, very wide and lofty, which follow, at a varying distance of from ten to thirty feet from the outside, the shape of the great rock on which the upper building stands. Wherever the tunnel approached near enough to the outside, the intervening mass was pierced with a great round hole, at which stood a cannon (they now have all got their noses turned inwards); and from the heavy mysterious gloom of these huge caverns you caught sight of the most exquisite little vignette views framed in black rock, sometimes fringed with maiden-hair fern—little pictures perfectly painted. The effect was wonderful, from the concentration of light caused by looking through a tube, perhaps fifteen feet long, with black darkness on our side. At one time it was the Red Palace with its arcades; at another a museum or church; then a bright bit of sea with men-of-war riding at anchor. The maiden's-hair was not growing at all; for some had been newly chiselled out, to enable the guns to be better pointed down into the street. There were, perhaps, thirty in all. Then they showed us the big ovens quite at hand to red-heat the balls that they might set fire to any building they struck, and balls standing near, waiting to be heated. Some of the guns swept the drawbridge and causeway by which one ascends from the outer wall; and there are all the necessaries for a body of troops to live down there, even if the outworks were taken—mills for grinding corn, bread-ovens, sleeping huts, page 159 &c. This place is perfectly bomb proof. They talked of destroying St. Elmo; but none of us could understand how they could destroy this place, except by blasting away the entire hill.

Here and there were trap-doors which led down to a lower étage just like the upper one: that makes three floors; and now come the dungeons.

These have no communication with the batteries. To reach them we went a long way down the sloping covered road which leads to the Castle from the drawbridge. I think the door we went in by was on a level with the mouths of those wicked gun-holes. After entering it we went still further down steps and sloping passages cut roughly in the rock, until we came to a large circular dome-shaped cavern, the light of which was very dim. At one side of this cave hall, there was a funnel-shaped opening, beginning wide and growing narrower, until it reached the face of the rock and open air, where it was heavily barred. I think it looked towards the sea and islands of the west, but we could not see anything distinctly. All around this hall were little huts of mason-work, detached one from the other, that there might be less chance of communication. They had heavy doors faced with iron, if I remember rightly, and in each door a little window with a heavy shutter and bolts; and it was only through this window that the cell could borrow a little light from the large cave which was already so dim, and from which not a speck of green or of sky could be seen. I imagine, from the shape of the bars in the little window, that the door was never opened even to give food. The windows had an opening into which you could have slid a soup plate, which will give you an idea of their size; and the people there confidently assert that the shutters were closed by day. Inside each hut was a bed made of two boards, fixed in the corner, a little sloping, to save a pillow; in one the bed was of stone, with a pillow cut in stone. They have been cleaned out and white-washed, but the stench is still overpowering; imagine what it was when inhabited by people who were never let out, who had no mattresses, and had to wear their clothes night and day! And, if so much cheating goes on about the food in the hospitals, which are open to every visitor, how may we imagine these people were fed!

There was one cell still worse than the others. A little winding staircase led up to it. Even with the door wide open you could not see the person at your elbow. Of course I had heard and read all about the prisons, as you will read this; but, standing there, it came upon me as it had never done before, as a new sense, what it would be to have that door shut upon one. Even when it was open, the darkness seemed to weigh like a year of midnight on my chest, and to crush the breath out. I don't think I should have courage to try to keep alive there; I should lie down on that plank bed and never move any more. A man was kept sixteen years in that hole! In that moment the last spark of pity I had felt for the Bourbons died out of me, and I could have clapped my hands for joy to think that it was over. In other countries a single abuse may arise; like that on which Charles Reade has founded his novel Never too late to mend; but this was the system, upheld by the Government, and known in all its details to Bomba at least, and made use of not against criminals, but against noble-minded men—against many even stupidly innocent, who had not an idea of being patriots, but in whose dusty book-shelves might have been found some book with a forbidden name or word in its pages, which had probably never been opened by its present owner. There is a good reason for never finding a library in the house of a Neapolitan.

But these are not the worst prisons. They are dry: there are others by the sea which drip night and day; and a gentleman who was with us had been informed by one of the released prisoners of a torture invented by his jailor—to dash on him, through an opening at the top, cold water at any time, night or day. He could not avoid it in any part of his cell, and never went to sleep page 160 without expecting it. It became a haunting terror to him, and he had to remain shivering in his wet clothes until they dried upon him. It was a way of extorting money from the friends of a prisoner, to torture him unless bribed not to do so. There were names and dates inscribed on the rock—one of a Spanish nobleman 200 years ago. Some told of very long imprisonments: it seemed as if the very rocks were impregnated with sighs and tears, and groans, and as if they weighed and crushed one's heart with misery.

But there is more to tell, very horrible and mysterious. In the middle of this large cave there was a great round hole, with a low parapet wall enclosing it; and, looking down into it, we saw another hall cut in the rock, like that in which we stood—larger because of not being filled with the cells, and very deep—lighted by a slanting shaft to the opening of the upper one. They. told us that this was the place in which they used to put a number of prisoners, whom they wanted to get rid of, together, and shoot them from above. There was an iron gate in the side of the upper hall which led down by a staircase cut in the rock to the under one—a wide staircase, the ends of the steps sharp, but in the middle worn into one continuous slope. Even if the story of the shooting is an exaggeration, it must have taken thousands of feet to wear the steps like this; and certainly those feet had not carried people there for their own pleasure. There is another gate at the bottom, and more cells opening upon the stairs. It is true that all around the sides of this cave, about the height of a man's head and chest, the walls are marked with round holes, which Captain said he could not imagine having been made by anything but a bullet. Supposing that this was used not for political prisoners, but in cases of military revolt, yet what a system to put men into a wild beast's hole and shoot them down, instead of having an open execution after fair trial! The best colour one can put upon it is horrible.

I took the children: it will not be my fault if they do not grow up haters of tyranny and dark dealing. I did not allow them, however, to go into the cells, lest they should be poisoned; but sent them up into the blessed light of day. When we came up again upon the huge ramparts, and saw the celestial looking sunset over the peaks of Ischia, and the rosy clouds mirrored in the bay, it made my heart ache the more for those who had spent years without being able to tell the winter from the summer, scarcely the day from the night. I hope many of them have it made up to them now in glories which the eye of man hath not seen, nor his ear heard.