After a wearisome delay, the sentence was read to the prisoners, Pellico and his intimate friend and companion Maroncelli, in court, and afterward formally communicated to them on a scaffold which had been raised in the Piazzetta of San Marco. An immense crowd had collected, full of compassionate sympathy, and to overawe them a strong body of troops had been paraded with bayonets fixed, and artillery was posted with port fires alight. An usher came out upon an elevated gallery of the palace above and read the order aloud until he reached the words “condemned to death,” when the crowd, unable to restrain overwrought feeling, burst into a loud murmur of condolence, which was followed by deep silence when the words of commutation were read. Maroncelli was sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment and Silvio Pellico to fifteen, both to be confined under the rules of _carcere duro_ in the fortress of Spielberg. The conditions of _carcere duro_ may be described as extremely irksome and rigorous. The subject was closely chained by the legs; he had to sleep on a bare board--the _lit de soldat_ or “plank bed”--and to subsist on a most limited diet, little more than bread and water, with a modicum of poor soup every other day. More merciless and brutal treatment was that of _carcere durissimo_, when the chaining consisted of a body belt or iron waist-band affixed to the wall by a chain so short that it allowed no movement beyond the length of the plank bed. Part of the rations was a most unpalatable and filthy food, consisting of flour fried in lard and put by in pots for six months, then ladled out and dissolved in boiling water. An Austrian commissary of police came from Vienna to escort the patriot prisoners to Spielberg, and he brought with him news that afforded some small consolation. He had had an audience with the Emperor Joseph, who had been graciously pleased to grant a remission of sentence by making every twelve hours instead of twenty-four count as one day; in other words, diminishing the term by just half. No official endorsement of this proposal was signified and there was no certainty that it was true, and indeed, after the lapse of the first half of the sentence, release was not immediately accorded. Silvio’s seven and a half years was expanded into ten, and the imprisonment might have been dragged on for the full fifteen years but for the warm pleadings of the Sardinian ambassador at the court of Vienna.