The combination makes for dark humor as she asks Hank in her most dulcet tones to blast and kill someone for the evening's entertainment. He makes an allusion to the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, whose famous biography also contains contrasts of sublime piety and violence. The statement summarizes Hank's Yankee self-assurance, his attitude towards himself and his abilities. In the Queen's Dungeons When the Queen finds the next morning that her prisoner was released, she is furious, but unable to do anything about the matter. When he goes down into the dingy cells, he finds forty seven wasted, pathetic captives, most of whom were imprisoned for petty crimes and insults.
Hank sets all of the prisoners free and watches as the ragged bunch emerges from the castle.
He exclaims that he wishes he could photograph them, and Morgan Le Fay, feigning that she understands what photography is, rushes at the group with an ax. Hank marvels at how she would think to interpret his meaning with an ax before anything else. The stories Twain crafts to illustrate the injustices and suffering of feudal society take on a generic pathos as he piles on horror after horror. England's dungeons are never filled with criminals, but always young brides torn away from hearth and family for petty insults, or honest men falsely accused. The nameless peasants Twain paints are hopelessly oppressed, and his narratives almost seem like muckraking about the past.