Tuscan folk-lore and sketches, together with some other papers by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780530504001
Google: UHjjwwEACAAJ
Publisher: Creative Media Partners, LLC
Published: 2019-03-07T05:45:13+00:00

“When I say mass, they are all set ajar (there is in every case an iron gate, kept locked, inside the wooden door), and so the prisoners can look at the altar without seeing each other. I go round to them at regular intervals, unless someone calls for me specially, and talk to them from outside the iron gates. No, I am not afraid, but it is the custom. They generally like to have me go, and appear really to appreciate the comforts of religion. Read! Ah, you saw Library printed up near the gate, did you? But there are very few books in it. What can we give them? They must not read novels, and they must not read politics. I give them a religious paper about the miraculous Madonna at Pompeii, and some of them read that. Otherwise they do nothing. All the work of the place, washing, nursing, cooking, building, cleaning, is done by convicts. Even the barbers are convicts, and as they have nearly served their time, and besides get better paid than the others, they are careful of their behaviour; there is no need to be afraid of them. That house down there, with its back against the rock, is the lowest depth of all. The cells are dark, and none but the most refractory prisoners ever go there. It has been empty for some time past.

“Born criminals? No, I don’t much believe in that doctrine; I think that in most cases one whom Lombroso would call a born criminal, may be saved by careful training. Before I came here I knew a man who brutally killed his wife while his little boy looked on. The man was condemned; we looked after the bringing up of the boy. At first but little could be done with him. He would bully his fellows, and then, crossing his arms over his breast, would throw back his head defiantly and say: ‘Do you know who I am? My father was the terror of the village.’ He did not seem to know what pain was. I have seen him undergo an operation in his finger which had been caught in a machine, without a sign of suffering. One day the lads were working at a machine, and one of them grew tired. ‘Who’ll take my place?’ he called out. No answer. ‘Will no one help me?’ Another pause. Then the criminal’s son called out, ‘I will.’ He went to the machine and worked there till he was nearly dropping with fatigue. But from that day he was completely changed, and he has grown up into a quiet, trustworthy, hard-working man.”

By this time our courteous host had accompanied us back to the inner gateway; and so, taking leave of him, we left that terrible artificial world, over which, with a hush still greater than that of the sea and sky and mountain, broods the awful presence of unknown crime terribly expiated.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.