Montesinos entered upon his duties with a firm conviction of the paramount importance of military discipline, of that passive and unquestioning obedience to authority, the absolute surrender of individual volition, the complete subjection of the many to the single will of one superior master, which he believed to be the essence of all personal government and more particularly in a prison. To enforce such discipline was the only effectual method of securing good order and the due subordination of the rough and possibly recalcitrant elements under his command. In this he entirely succeeded and established an extraordinary influence over his charges. He became an autocrat but in the best sense; his prisoners resigned themselves submissively and unhesitatingly to his control, anxious to gain his good will by their exemplary demeanour and their unvarying desire to behave well. What he actually made of his charges, how he succeeded in changing their very natures, in transforming lawbreakers and evil doers into honest, trustworthy persons, successfully restraining their evil instincts, will be best realised by a few strange facts which, if not positively vouched for, would be considered beyond belief. But before relating these marvellous results it will be well to describe in some detail the processes adopted by him and the principles on which he acted. When Colonel Montesinos was appointed governor of the Valencian convent prison, it was located in an ancient mediæval edifice known as the "_Torres de Cuarte_," two towers flanking the great gate which gave upon the suburb known as "_El Cuarte_." This semi-ruinous building, dating from the fifteenth century, lodged about a thousand prisoners, herded together in a number of dark, dirty, ill-kept and insecure chambers, wholly unfit for human habitation. They were on several floors communicating by narrow passages and tortuous staircases, below which were deep underground cellars divided up into obscure foul dungeons, which were always humid from the infiltration from the city ditch and into which neither sunlight nor fresh air came to dry up the damp pavement and the streaming walls. Montesinos saw at once that it would be impossible to introduce reforms in such a building and he laboured hard to move into better quarters, securing at length, after a long correspondence, new quarters in the monastery of St. Augustine, which indeed was but little better. Here also the buildings had fallen into disrepair. A large part was without roof, there was little flooring, and many broken windows and decayed walls offered numerous facilities for escape. Extensive repairs were indispensable, yet funds were wanting, for the Spanish government was sorely taxed to meet the expenses of the civil war (Carlist) now in full swing. Nevertheless Montesinos, strenuous and indefatigable, a host in himself, transferred his people, a thousand convicts of dangerous character, into their new