I first opened the cell of the cavalier mentioned by the guide, and on entering awakened the occupant from a dreamy sleep—a man: although his features were hollowed by long confinement, want, and care; though his eyes were wild and his beard grizzled—the expression of whose face was as prepossessing and noble as his figure was commanding. He was tall and strong in person, but heavily fettered; and his garments were rags, which fluttered in the breeze that swept through his prison: he trembled with cold and debility. Poor man! a captivity of three long years had not inured him to the misery of the den to which the tyranny of a powerful persecutor had consigned him: his manacles clanked as he rose from the damp pavement, and a stern and scornful frown gathered on his haughty brow when he beheld me. "Reverend signor," said he, waving his fettered hand, "you may spare me your usual exhortations, and begone: yet think not that I am so hardened as to scorn a Christian churchman. God forbid you should suppose so! but I have nothing to confess, save my abhorrence of these bonds and the foul tyranny which immures me here, in a living grave, from light and happiness; subjecting me to misery under which, had not my own indomitable spirit supported me, reason must have given way. Leave me—begone!" "Signor Cavalier speak less angrily: I am not what you take me for, but a friend who comes to set you free. Remember, signor, that the British are the friends of Calabria; which our victorious army has already freed from the yoke of France." "What is this you tell me?" he exclaimed. "British troops in Calabria! And what am I reserved to hear? Naples has again become a province of France! yet not a voice has whispered it to me in this living tomb, where I have been kept in ignorance of all those great events that have shaken my country. From France—again from the grasp of France?" said you. "From the brother of Napoleon, whose soldiers we have driven from the rocks of Scylla to the hills of Cassano; hoisting the banner of Ferdinand on the towns and castles of the provinces, and gaining one most signal victory in a battle on the plains of Maida." "I am thunderstruck! And all this has passed in three years?" "In as many months." "O joy! And you have come to set me free, most reverend father?" "Yes,—but address me not thus: I am a British officer in disguise, and placed in a most peculiar position," I replied; quite forgetting the part I intended to act, in my sympathy for this unfortunate, whose frank and graceful bearing gained my entire good-will. "This Bishop of Cosenza," I observed, "seems a tyrant, of whose cruelty and injustice I have heard innumerable instances."