"Taken? By whom are they taken?" inquired Mr. James, who took a praiseworthy interest in prisons and their inmates.
"One of them is retained by the baron," said Captain Karvay. "It's now three years since the poor gentleman was sent to prison, and I'll swear to it he's innocent."
"Is he indeed?"
"Nothing more certain!" said the gallant captain. "He's a capital fellow, but a little violent, you know: and it may have happened that he has ordered his servant to beat a man; indeed, I don't know, but perhaps he did it himself. It's what everybody does, you know, and nobody minds it. But the baron had ill luck. Thirty years ago, he knocked one of his servants on the head, and the fellow died in consequence of the blow. A prosecution was commenced and carried on, and while it was being carried on it was all but forgotten; when, as ill luck would have it, the poor baron chanced to get himself into a fresh scrape. He is fond of his garden. The peasants stole his fruit and flowers. So he swore the first whom he could lay his hand on should have forty stripes. It was a vow, you know. And what happened? The very next morning a young chap was caught stealing cherries. Of course the baron could not think of breaking his vow. The young fellow was not quite ten years of age; he could not stand forty blows, and he died before the thing was fairly over. There was another row, and the county magistrates could not but sentence the baron to be confined for six months; the upper court cancelled the judgment, and gave the poor man four years! Only fancy! and he's seventy years old. It's an atrocious cruelty, you know, to send such a man to prison, and for four years too!"
"Yes, I remember," said James Bantornyi. "I heard it talked about when I returned from England. But I thought he had got over it. Some time ago I saw him on his estate."
"Why," replied the recorder, "if we were not to give him a run now and then, his manager would play the devil with his crops and cattle."
"The second room," continued the captain, "is inhabited by an attorney: he was sent here for forgery. And in the third room lives an engineer, who is likewise accused of forging bank-notes."
"And did it ever strike you," asked Mr. James, with great anxiety; "did it ever strike you that solitary confinement exerts a salutary influence on the prisoners?"
"It certainly does. Ever since the baron has lived with us, he's grown fat; he never complains of any thing except of his ill luck at cards, and that he cannot get any wine which is strong enough for him. He's blunted, you know."
"Wine and cards are not fit agents to carry out the purposes of solitary confinement: but, after all, the English too have, of late, relaxed the former rigour of their system. But how do the others go on?"