The Bridge of Sighs connects the Ducal Palace with the prisons of the town; it is divided into two separate passages: through one of these, the ordinary prisoners entered; through the other, the State prisoners went before the tribunal of the Inquisitors or the Ten. This bridge presents a graceful exterior, and the façade of the prison is admired: beauty cannot be dispensed with in Venice, even for tyranny and misfortune! Pigeons make their nests in the windows of the gaol; little doves, all covered with down, flutter their wings and moan at the bars, while waiting for their mother. In former days, innocent creatures used to be cloistered almost on leaving the cradle; their parents never saw them again except through the gratings of the parlour or the wicket of the door. VENICE, _September_ 1833. You can readily imagine that, in Venice, I necessarily thought of Silvio Pellico[101]. M. Gamba had told me that the Abbé Betio was the master of the Palace and that, by applying to him, I should be able to make my researches. The excellent librarian, to whom I had recourse one morning, took a big bunch of keys and led me, along several passages and up various stair-cases, to the garrets of the author of _Le mie Prigioni._ M. Silvio Pellico has made only one mistake; he has spoken of his gaol as of one of those famous prison-cells high up in the air, marked by their roofing _sotto i piombi._ Those prisons are, or rather were five in number, in that portion of the Ducal Palace which adjoins the Ponte della Paglia and the canal of the Bridge of Sighs. Pellico did not dwell there; he was incarcerated at the other end of the Palace, near the Ponte degli Canonici, in a building contiguous to the Palace, which building had been transformed, in 1820, into a gaol for political prisoners. However, he was also "under the leads," for a plate of that metal formed the roofing of his hermitage. The description which the prisoner gives of his first and second room is exact to the last particular. Through the window of the first room, one looks out on the roof of St. Mark's; one sees the well in the inner yard of the Palace, a corner of the Piazza, the different steeples of the town and, beyond the lagoons, on the horizon, mountains in the direction of Padua. The second room is recognised by its big window and by another smaller and higher window: it was through the big one that Pellico used to perceive his companions in misfortune in a detached building opposite and, on the left, above, the dear children who used to talk to him from their mother's casement. To-day all those chambers are deserted, for men remain nowhere, not even in the prisons; the bars of the windows have been removed and the walls and ceilings white-washed. The gentle and learned Abbé Betio, living in this abandoned part of the Palace, is its peaceful and solitary guardian. [Sidenote: Silvio Pellico.]