On Sunday, I attended the Catholic chapel attached to the prison—a damp, unwholesome cell. I stood among a knot of prisoners, enveloped in a nauseous vapor; whence arose musty, mouldy, rotten effluvia which gradually overpowered my senses. I felt them leaving me, and tottered toward the door. I was promptly met by a man who seemed provided for emergencies of the kind; for, he held a vessel of cold water; poured some of it into my hands, and directed me to bathe my temples. I partly recovered; and, faint and dispirited, staggered back to the prison. I had not, however, lain long upon my bed (polished and slippery from constant use), when the prison guard came to my side, holding in his hand a smoking basin of egg soup “for the Englishman.” It was sent by the mistress of the kitchen. I received the offering of a kind heart to a foreigner in trouble, with a blessing on the donor.
On the following Tuesday, after an imprisonment of, in all, nine days, during which I had never slept without my clothes, I was discharged from the prison. In remembrance of the place, I brought away with me a straw landscape and a bread snuff-box, the works of the prison artist.
On reaching my lodging I looked into my box. It was empty.
“Where are my books and papers?” I asked my landlord.
The police had taken them on the day after my arrest.
“And my bank-notes?”
“Here they are!” exclaimed my landlord, triumphantly. “I expected the police; I knew you had money somewhere, so I took the liberty of searching until I found it. The police made particular inquiries about your cash, and went away disappointed, taking the other things with them.”
“Would they have appropriated it?”
“Hem! Very likely—under pretense of paying your expenses.”
On application to the police of the district, I received the whole of my effects back. One of my books was detained for about a week; a member of the police having taken it home to read, and being as I apprehend, a slow reader.