Three new prisons were built in Austria-Hungary during the latter years of the nineteenth century, all of them imposing edifices. One of these is at Marburg on the Drave and holds eight hundred prisoners, partly in cells, partly in association; another is at Stanislau in Galicia for the same number, which has but few cells, as separate confinement is not suited to the agricultural classes constituting the inmates of the prison. The farm land and gardens surrounding are extensive and the work done is mainly agricultural. A third prison is at Pankraz Nusle near Prague and stands on a height behind the celebrated Wyschehrad. The prison can accommodate one thousand inmates and has replaced the old building at St. Wenzel. A portion of the building at Marburg was carried out by convicts. Till these new prisons were built, that at Pilsen was considered the best in Austria. Another at Stein on the Danube, between Linz and Vienna, holds about one thousand prisoners sentenced to a year and upwards, and is organised on a very sound and intelligent basis. The discipline at Stein, according to the reports of competent visitors, is very creditable. It is claimed for it that the daily average on the punishment list is only nine and that there has not been a sign of a mutiny in sixteen years. Corporal punishment does not exist, but the methods by which order is maintained seem harsh and afford another proof that the abolition of the lash calls for other penalties which are physically more injurious and morally quite as debasing. A writer in the _Times_ in 1886 gives a description of a prisoner whom he saw who had been sentenced to a month in a punishment cell for destroying materials entrusted to him for manufacture. He was to spend twelve days in darkness on bread and water; twelve days absolutely fasting, with only water to drink; to have no work, to sleep on a plank bed, and for four whole days was to wear a chain and shot on his ankles. Finally, for the last eighteen hours of his punishment he was to be “short-chained”--a torture which consists in “strapping up one foot at right angles to the knee of the other leg, so that the prisoner cannot stand but can only sit in a posture which after a few minutes becomes intolerably fatiguing, and then acutely painful.” Strait-waistcoats are also used for the refractory, and a very effective but cruel gag,--an iron hoop with a brass knob like a door handle. The knob is forced into the mouth and the hoop passed over and locked behind the head. CHAPTER II FRIEDRICH VON DER TRENCK AT MAGDEBURG