Torches were lighted, and we told the guide that we preferred to follow him. On we went, where not a ray of light from the outer world could reach us. Had our torches been extinguished we should have been in darkness as deep as that of the lowest and most elaborate mine in the world. It did not require a vivid imagination to roll back the centuries, and bring before us the thousands and thousands of men who had lain there, day after day, without hope, until led to trial, and thence to execution. What a world of mystery lies concealed in these prisons! Here is the cell where Marino Faliero was confined; and here is the cell where Jacopo Foscari passed the days preceding his execution; and here is the cell where dozens of men of noble birth and gentle rearing were kept day after day, till they died of starvation and for want of fresh air. The cells are little boxes, some of them not more than six or eight feet square, and not high enough to allow a tall man to stand erect. One cell is only four feet high; and it was said that a healthy man confined in this cell generally died on the sixth day, owing to the dampness and impurity of the air he was compelled to breathe.
To have a practical realization for a few moments of the horrors of imprisonment, we entered one of these cells, and told the guide to take away the torches and not to return for five minutes, whether we called him or not. He went away; the air had been chilly, damp, and disagreeable; and it seemed ten times more so as the light disappeared. The darkness was of the intensest blackness; we could not distinguish anything. With our faces turned towards the door of the cell it seemed the same; the finger held an inch before the eye was no more visible than if it had been cut off and buried a hundred feet deep in the earth.
One minute was quite enough of this sort of thing, and we were inclined to shout for the guide, when we remembered that we had told him to get out of hearing, and not to return even if we called.
I almost expected the ghost of one of the departed occupants to rise before me, and add to the discomfort of the occasion. A ghost is bad enough anywhere; but I always prefer to encounter him above ground, and where there is, at least, enough light to enable me to see him. Had one of those gentlemen made his appearance, it would have been necessary for him to bring a lantern, or rub his unearthly limbs with phosphorus, to enable us to see him.
But no ghost made his appearance, possibly for the reason that the body in the flesh had had quite enough of that place, and had no wish to send his shadow back again. The five minutes’ absence of the guide seemed at least an hour, and when he returned we welcomed him with all the enthusiasm with which we would have welcomed a brother from whom we had been separated a dozen years. We told him that we thought he had been away much longer than the time stipulated, but he assured us he had not.
On narrating this incident afterwards to a party of gentlemen in Paris, I was told of a similar experience, only a great deal more so, of a couple of travellers, one an Englishman and the other an American, who tried the experiment which we did. It seems that the men wished for a little taste of imprisonment, and sent away their guide for half an hour.
It happened to be near the close of the day. Their guide was a stupid fellow, and thought he would improve his thirty minutes by retiring to a Trattoria to indulge in a bottle of cheap wine. So he came out of the palace and crossed the Piazzetta San Marco to a restaurant near the corner of the piazza. He took his wine, indulged himself for about twenty minutes, and then started on his return. He had not observed the hour of his departure from the palace, and when he returned to the entrance he found it closed. It was the time for closing, and the persons in charge of the premises had shut the doors and gone away.
SHUT UP ALL NIGHT.
Here was a predicament. He had left the two gentlemen down in the dungeon in total darkness, where he could not reach them, and where their shouts could not be heard. He tried to obtain an entrance to the palace, and to explain the matter, but the porters were obstinate, and did not believe his story. Italians are very suspicious, and the custodian of the palace suspected that he wished to get inside in order to steal something; so they turned him away, and he walked off sorrowing.