From England the travellers had meant to go to Berlin, but the King of Prussia, who eleven years before had kept Dr. Howe in prison _au secret_ for five weeks for carrying (at the request of General Lafayette) succor to certain Polish refugees, still regarded him as a dangerous person, and Prussia was closed to him and his. This greatly amused Horace Mann, who wrote to the Doctor, "I understand the King of Prussia has about 200,000 men constantly under arms, and if necessary he can increase his force to two millions. This shows the estimation in which he holds your single self!" Years later, the King sent Dr. Howe a gold medal in consideration of his work for the blind: by a singular coincidence, its money value was found to equal the sum which the Doctor had been forced to pay for board and lodging in the prison of Berlin. Making a détour, the party journeyed through Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol, spent some weeks in Vienna, and a month in Milan, where they met Count Gonfalonieri, one of the prisoners of Spielberg. Julia had known two of these sufferers, Foresti and Albinola, in New York, where they lived for many years, beloved and respected. Hearing the talk of these men, and seeing Italy bound hand and foot in temporal and spiritual fetters, she was deeply impressed by the apparent hopelessness of the outlook for the Italian patriots. By what miracle, she asked herself long afterward, was the great structure overthrown? She adds, "The remembrance of this miracle forbids me to despair of any great deliverance, desired and delayed. He who maketh the wrath of men to serve Him, can make liberty blossom out of the very rod that the tyrant [wields]." Southward still they journeyed, by _vettura_, in the old leisurely fashion, and came at last to Rome. The thrill of wonder that Julia felt at the first sight of St. Peter's dome across the Campagna was one of the abiding impressions of her life; Rome was to be one of the cities of her heart; the charm was cast upon her in that first moment. Yet she says of that Rome of 1843, "A great gloom and silence hung over it."