Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1860-09-13
lQlOttester @allp Spp.

BY EDMUND TEXIER.

For the last fifteen days there has been
much said at Naples concerning a mysterious
parsonage who had been found in one of the
royal prisons. The English journals have
made some mention of this unknown one. A
writer of talent, Mr.. Mark Monnier, sends me
some details in relation to the man who excites
so lively curiosity, which will not be read
without interest,
The political prison has just been opened in
Naples. For the first time for fifteen years,
there has entered, all at once, flood of light
INTO these cells, unaccustomed TO the sun,
(which Mr.. Gladstone had lighted for an in
slant by his generous and attentive regard.
All the world has been able today to search
these impenetrable retreats. They have re-
counted their mysteries, and revealed histories
which will shake the world. The prisons OF
1860 were the same as those OF 1881, Ill winch
Howard had seen $40 sick persons heaped up
to breath in the bottom of a court which re-
sembled the bottom OF well. The walls of
the building were SO high, wrote Howard, that
one would have said they were constructed to
intercept the air. There were infected and
obscure chambers, in which the prisoners
lived naked TO support the heat There are
few or no ameliorations since the last century
In 1884 superintendent named Sancio, in an
official report, confessed that the prisoners of
Procida, isolated from the world and deprived
vi every tuIiiS, peTlSHeu, lOr Tie most part, by
consumption and phthiSic. In short, the
segrete or criminal horrible calls, sepulchres of
the living, built by Ferdinand H. at his sue
cession to the throne, existed until within a
few days, An ordinance of the 9th of July,
1860, shut them out forever.
In these cells hunger, cold, the most odious
treatment, even torture, sacrificed not only the
condemned not only the accused, but the
simply suspected, those whom the vaguest de-
nunciatiOns had delivered to the police. They
questioned them, not only to wiring confessions
from them, but even to know whether they
had any confessions to make. They caused
them to confess, by means of fortunes, in order
to Tighten a simple doubt; and these facts do
not date five centuries back, but from the last
month They were already known, but PEG.
pie were silent in regard to them, for want of
proof. To-day they are confirmed by horrible
evidence, TO which exception can no longer be
taken--the mutilated bodies of the victims.
All the men of feeling in Naples have
wished to see at least one of these unfortunate
liberated men, and the doubters like Thomas,
have been able to convince themselves OF the
terrible truth, by putting their hands into the
scarce closed wounds of the sufferers. For my
part, have seen several among others, two
whose only crime was that having been born
in the village Agesilas, Milano. There was
were Calabrians-that was all. And because
they were Calabrians, they had been held four
years in prison, without judgement without
process without pity, without justice.
l have seen them, these heroic children Of
great Greece. One Of them, enfeebled by sut-
tering, totters painfully upon limbs which can
scarcely sustain him. They are grave simple,
quiet, full of modesty and dignity. Happy to
have suffered, they did not desire pity; they
do not demand their place in the martyrs cat
aogue OF Italy. They return to the fight, in
their province, where new dangers await them,
carrying back with them, OF their four years of
trials, only the contempt of fortunes and the
love of country.
| lOnged, in meeting them, to embrace these
courageous men, who have obtained the great
est success OF sympathy and admiration. But
the success of curiosity and establishment is
reserved tor one of the most singular person.
ages of these judicial dramas, so frequently in
Italy.
This mysterious prisoner was discovered
almost by accident. A lawyer, one OF the first
freed from the prison Of San Francesca, re-
ported that there was in one of the cells OF that
place an unknown man, thrown there four
years before, and who had been delivered to
the police Of Naples by the police OF Rome.
They were ignorant Of his crime, ignorant
even of his name. He was called the Amer
icdn and he was there alone, forgotten, know
ing no one.
Immediately, several kind-hearted Neapoli-
tans, DR.. Luigi Arenare among Others re-
paired to San francesca. They found indeed,
in a chamber to which he had been transferred
since the amnesty, strange man, clothed IN
flannel waistcoat and coarse pantaloons, re
duced to extreme meagreneSs, rambling, beside
himself, almost trighttul to behold His
his weakened limbs would not support him
his long, brown hair fell to the middle of his
back; he was no longer a man; he had q
jerking, convusive gesture. They asked him
his name he would not tell it. Extreme et
forts were necessary to induce him TO come
out Of prison.
They sought for his commitment upon the
registers of the police and the minister's Of
flee but they found none. They consulted
the jailors, who knew nothing. HE is the
American" said the guards Of the prison, and
they were ignorant OF the rest. After extern
sive research, they found, somewhere letter
of a police subatern to his chief, which con-
tanned the following 1--WE have still the
American in custody" That was all. They
found also the reply of the chief, who wrote,
"That is well"
Never has anything more been known about
this anonymous parsonage. Since then, not.
outstanding the kind reception he has every
where met he has not yet told his tale nor the
secret of his life. l have seen him my self
several times and / think am one of those
who have obtained the most of his confidence.
He has written me few fragments of his his
tory, and has permitted me to offer them to
you
lie thinks he was born in Alexandria, in
Egypt; at least it is of that place that he has
the old st remembrance. He was brought up
by certain francesca Romano and an Eng
fish woman named Fanny, who loved him
tenderly and treated him as their son. And
he believed himself to be so. till his fourteenth
year; then only he learned from them that he
was not He begged them to reveal the secret
of his birth they told him that time would
declare all He prayed, entreated, almost in
despair. Then he fled in secret, in vessel
commanded by certain Comblit, which came
from Smyrna.
Since then, he has made the tour of the
world. He spoke to me of Paris, of Geneva,
OF Russia OF all Italy; he has lived every
where and the longest in A2Aica. Here
did not wish to press my quesTdhs too much,
Tor he did not like to reply to them. l think
! understood he fought in Lombardy in the
first war, but he must then have been young,
for, in spite OF his countenance turrowed by
suffering, he does not appear to be more than
thirty.
One day, at last (about seven years ago), he
left Boston, without passport, upon Geho,
ese vessel on which he was received as one OF
the crew He left it at Genoa, and went by
land to Rome, passing through the cities,
where he stopped, said he to me, to see the
monuments and the people. This curiosity
foSt him dearly