and they ran down three or four stories. The Venetian of old time
abhorred them as deeply as his descendants, who, on the first
arrival of the conquering French, attempted to block or break up
the lowest of them, but were not entirely successful; for, when
Byron was in Venice, it was not uncommon for adventurous tourists
to descend by a trap-door, and crawl through holes, half choked
by rubbish, to the depth of two stories below the first range.
So says the writer of the _Notes_ to the fourth canto of "Childe
Harolde" (Byron's friend Hobhouse, if our memory serves), who
adds, "If you are in want of consolation for the extinction of
patrician power, perhaps you may find it there. Scarcely a ray of
light glimmers into the narrow gallery which leads to the cells,
and the places of confinement themselves are totally dark. A
little hole in the wall admitted the damp air of the passages,
and served for the introduction of the prisoner's food. A
wooden pallet, about a foot or so from the ground, was the only
furniture. The conductors tell you a light was not allowed. The
cells are about five paces in length, two and a half in width,
and seven feet in height. They are directly beneath one another,
and respiration is somewhat difficult in the lower holes. Only
one prisoner was found when the Republicans descended into these
hideous recesses, and he is said to have been confined sixteen
years." When the prisoner's hour came he was taken out and
strangled in a cell upon the Bridge of Sighs!

And this was in Venice! The grand old Republic which was once the
greatest Power of Eastern Europe; the home of great artists and
architects, renowned the world over for arts and arms; the Venice
of "blind old Dandolo," who led her galleys to victory at the
ripe old age of eighty; the Venice of Doge Foscari, whose son