"Eh!" said our friend, "I believe you."
"We mean those under the Villa P——."
"Exactly."
There was a tone of politely suppressed amusement in the abbate's voice; and after a moment's pause, in which we felt our awful experience slipping and sliding away from us, we ventured to say, "You don't mean that those are not the veritable Ecelino prisons?"
"Certainly they are nothing of the kind. The Ecelino prisons were destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the tower, which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory."
"But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?"
"Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside of the old city walls."
"And those tortures and the prisons are all"—
"Things got up for show. No doubt, Ecelino used such things, and many worse, of which even the ingenuity of Signor P—— cannot conceive. But he is an eccentric man, loving the horrors of history, and what he can do to realize them he has done in his prisons."
"But the custodian—how could he lie so?"