Yet In This Prison Of Madrid, And I May Say In
Spanish Prisons In General, For I Have Been An
Inmate of more than
one, the ears of the visitor are never shocked with horrid
blasphemy and obscenity, as in
Those of some other countries, and
more particularly in civilized France; nor are his eyes outraged
and himself insulted, as he would assuredly be, were he to look
down upon the courts from the galleries of the Bicetre. And yet in
this prison of Madrid were some of the most desperate characters in
Spain: ruffians who had committed acts of cruelly and atrocity
sufficient to make the flesh shudder. But gravity and sedateness
are the leading characteristics of the Spaniards, and the very
robber, except in those moments when he is engaged in his
occupation, and then no one is more sanguinary, pitiless, and
wolfishly eager for booty, is a being who can be courteous and
affable, and who takes pleasure in conducting himself with sobriety
and decorum.
Happily, perhaps, for me, that my acquaintance with the ruffians of
Spain commenced and ended in the towns about which I wandered, and
in the prisons into which I was cast for the Gospel's sake, and
that, notwithstanding my long and frequent journeys, I never came
in contact with them on the road or in the despoblado.
The most ill-conditioned being in the prison was a Frenchman,
though probably the most remarkable. He was about sixty years of
age, of the middle stature, but thin and meagre, like most of his
countrymen; he had a villainously-formed head, according to all the
rules of craniology, and his features were full of evil expression.
He wore no hat, and his clothes, though in appearance nearly new,
were of the coarsest description.
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