The prison of the Piombi or the “Leads” was of quite a different character and was so called because it lay on the topmost story of the ducal palace immediately under the leaden roof. It consisted, as indeed may still be seen, of a series of small chambers with a roof so low that a man of six feet could not stand erect under the ceiling. They were not abundantly provided with light or air. Many were darkened by the overhanging eaves and massive projections in the architectural façade, and only a scant supply of air entered through the small windows in the neighbouring passages. Their worst feature was the extraordinary variations of temperature. In the summer, when the dog-day sun beat down pitilessly upon the leads, the heat was almost insupportable; in the winter, being unprovided with fireplaces and having no provision for artificial warmth, they were almost glacial. The disciplinary régime was a mixture of barbarous severity and extreme neglect. Prisoners were only visited once daily by a gaoler who attended half a dozen cells, brought in food and, if necessary, arranged for a doctor’s visit many hours after occasion arose. This single visit was made soon after sunrise, when the secretary to the inquisitor, who held all the keys, suffered them to go out of his own keeping for the brief space of an hour. At first, no books were issued except those of a dreary devotional description. All writing materials, pens, ink or paper were scrupulously forbidden. Imprisonment might be quite solitary till the loneliness long protracted grew all but maddening; the alternative was uncongenial companionship with some offensive and personally unclean creature from whom there was no escape day or night, a far greater hardship than unbroken solitude. What life really meant in the Piombi has been graphically recorded at first hand by one who endured it for a year or more, but, goaded to despair, dared all to escape from its intolerable evils.