The town was so full of reek and passion, that, most in the low quarters it was necessary for us to traverse, I doubt if I could have survived without him. But he was too well known and feared to leave my safety much in question. Then the Lazzari and their allies of the conquering army were such sworn blood-brothers, that it needed never more than the smallest bone of dispute to set either tearing at the other’s throat, whereby a flying petticoat, circumnavigating both, was able to avoid shipwreck between. Indeed, we had committed more than one red scrimmage to our wake by the time we were arrived, breathless but whole, at the door of the Carmine. A roar and drift of torches surged upon us from a side alley at the moment that we reached our goal. Here was a wave of passion broken from the main wastes, and bearing forward on its crest a single victim to its fury, whom it seemed about to fling against the sullen walls of the prison. He was a mere boy, and his face as white as wax. By the door stood a Calabrese sentry, armed with a musket and a great sabre, and a rose in his hand, the gift thorn and all of some amorous _contadina_. As the boy was hurled up the steps, “Smell to this, poor lad,” said he; “art faint?”--and he thrust the rose violently against the victim’s nostrils. The poor wretch staggered back, uttering a horrible scream, his face bathed in blood. There had been a long pin concealed among the petals, which had stung him almost to the brain. I am not sentimental, but I shall hope some day to be to that Calabrese in the relation of Lazarus to Dives. The mob, however, roared laughter over the jest, clapping their victim with a certain good-humour on the back, as we were all carried together in a confused struggle up the steps and into a vaulted stone hall beyond. This stronghold, massive and mediæval, had only lately been the scene of the treacherous massacre of a patriot garrison, and its stones were yet mapped and mottled with the story of the deed. And since, being made a State butchery, without regard to accommodation or cleanliness, from every carrion Jacobin, it seemed, had emerged a living swarm, predestined children of the grave, who haunted the corridors with unclean cries, and showed ghastly visions of wounds and suffering at the grates as we hurried by. It was a catacomb, in whose rotting lanes of stone walked a hundred vampires, gloating over their huddled pens of victims.