"Cast your eyes into a large dungeon beneath the prisoners I have just pointed out to you, and observe what is passing there. Do you see those three ill-looking rascals? They are highwaymen. See! they are effecting their escape. Some one has furnished them with a dumb-file in a loaf of bread; and they have already cut through one of the thick bars of a window, by which they may gain the court-yard, and from thence the street. They have been more than ten months in prison, and it is upwards of eight since they should have received the public recompense due to their exploits; but, thanks to the tardiness of justice, they are about to begin again their career of robbery and murder.
"And now look into that low roofed cell where you perceive twenty or thirty men, some of them stretched upon straw. They are mostly pickpockets, shop-lifters, or professors of other branches of the Spartan craft. Do you observe five or six of them worrying a sort of labourer, who was introduced to their society this morning for having wounded an alguazil with a stone?" "And what are they thrashing him for?" asked Zambullo. "Why," replied Asmodeus, "because he has not paid his entrance-fees. But," added he, "let us leave this horrible place, and the miserable wretches it contains; they are not in my vocation: we will go elsewhere, in search of objects less disgusting."
CHAPTER VIII.
OF VARIOUS PERSONS EXHIBITED TO DON CLEOPHAS BY ASMODEUS, WHO REVEALS TO THE STUDENT WHAT EACH HAS DONE IN HIS DAY.
