It is a cool spring morning, and the small crowd which daily gathers to watch the arrival of the prisoners in their black-covered wagons has dispersed; the guard of infantry has marched back to the Rocca, once the castle of the popes and now a barracks; and only a couple of carabinieri stand before the door, their white-gloved hands clasped before their belts. Inside, in the extreme rear of the church, you find yourself in a small inclosure seating a couple of hundred people, and a foot or so lower than the level of the rest of the building. This is full of visitors from Rome, wives of lawyers, townspeople, and a scattering of English and American motorists. A rail separates this—the only provision for spectators—from the real court. (At the Thaw and Patterson trials the guests of the participants and officials swarmed all over the court-room, around and beside the jury-box, inside the rail at which the prisoners were seated, and occasionally even shared the dais with the judge.) We will assume that the proceedings have not yet begun, and that the advocates in their black gowns are chatting among themselves or conferring with their clients through the bars of the cage, which is built into the right-hand side of the church and completely fills it. This cage, by the way, is an absolute necessity where large numbers of prisoners are tried together. The custom of isolating the defendant in some such fashion is not peculiar to Italy, but is in use in our own country as well; and if one attends a criminal trial in the city of Boston he will see the accused elevated in a kind of temporary cell in the middle of the court-room, and looking as if he were suspended in a sort of human bird-cage. Where, as in most jurisdictions of the United States, every defendant can demand a separate trial as of right (which he almost inevitably does demand), no inconvenience is to be anticipated from allowing him his temporary freedom while in the court-room in the custody of an officer. But there are many cases, where three or more defendants are tried together, when, even in New York City, there is considerable danger that the prisoners may seek the opportunity to carry out a vendetta against the witnesses or to revenge themselves upon judge or prosecutor. There is much to be said in favor of isolating defendants in some such way, particularly where they are on trial for atrocious crimes or are likely to prove insane. The Camorrists at Viterbo have already been incarcerated for over four years—one of them died in prison—and were they accessible in the court-room to their relatives or criminal associates and could thus procure fire-arms or knives, there is no prophesying what the result might be to themselves or others. Certain it is that the chief witness, the informer Abbatemaggio, would have met a speedy death before any of his testimony had been given.