The police regulations were extremely severe against heresy, but brigandage was common, and the darker streets were unsafe at night to strangers. People were not infrequently robbed in their own doorways, and there was a recognized system of violent robbery known as "doorway robbing." The streets were very badly lighted, and the entrance halls on the ground floor were scarcely ever lighted, so that we always carried wax tapers to light ourselves up to our rooms, or to visit our friends. Incautious foreigners, ignorant of this need for precaution, entering the dark passages, were sometimes seized by robbers hidden behind the door, gagged, and stripped of all valuables without a possibility of assistance unless a friend happened to enter the house at the moment, for the police were never seen about the streets at night. I had, in the second year of my residence, a very narrow escape from capture by brigands, which might have been a serious matter. I was making, with my wife and son, our _villeggiatura_ at Porto d'Anzio, then a miserable fishing village, but, except Civita Vecchia, the only convenient seaside locality in the States of the Church where one could find lodgings. With an American lady friend staying with us, we planned to make an excursion by boat to the Punta d'Astura, where are the ruins of a villa of Cicero; but when half way there we were driven back by a passing shower. On the same day a party of Roman sportsmen, out quail shooting, were "held up" in the ruins and obliged to pay a ransom of five thousand scudi. The brigands of the kingdom of Naples were constantly given refuge and sustenance on our side the frontier, and on a visit to Olevano, in the Sabine hills, I was witness of a band of over two hundred taking refuge from the Italian troops in the Papal territory, and being furnished with provisions and refreshments as at a festa. Artists out sketching were never molested, not because the Papal influence protected us, but because the brigands knew their poverty, and had a tinge of sympathy with the arts.