to death with her own pilgrim’s staff. He was newly married, and
gave some of her apparel to his wife: saying that he had bought it
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at a fair. She, however, who had seen the pilgrim-countess passing
through their town, recognised some trifle as having belonged to
her. Her husband then told her what he had done. She, in
confession, told a priest; and the man was taken, within four days
after the commission of the murder.
There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, or its
execution, in this unaccountable country; and he had been in prison
ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining with the other
prisoners, they came and told him he was to be beheaded next
morning, and took him away. It is very unusual to execute in Lent;
but his crime being a very bad one, it was deemed advisable to make
an example of him at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were
coming towards Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard of
this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the churches,
calling on the people to pray for the criminal’s soul. So, I
determined to go, and see him executed.
The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a-half o’clock, Roman
time: or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I had two friends
with me; and as we did not know but that the crowd might be very
great, we were on the spot by half-past seven. The place of
execution was near the church of San Giovanni decollato (a doubtful
compliment to Saint John the Baptist) in one of the impassable back
streets without any footway, of which a great part of Rome is
composed – a street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong
to anybody, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and
certainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular
purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little like deserted
breweries, and might be warehouses but for having nothing in them.
Opposite to one of these, a white house, the scaffold was built.
An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy-looking thing of course: some
seven feet high, perhaps: with a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising
above it, in which was the knife, charged with a ponderous mass of
iron, all ready to descend, and glittering brightly in the morning
sun, whenever it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud.
There were not many people lingering about; and these were kept at
a considerable distance from the scaffold, by parties of the Pope’s
dragoons. Two or three hundred foot-soldiers were under arms,
standing at ease in clusters here and there; and the officers were
walking up and down in twos and threes, chatting together, and
smoking cigars.
At the end of the street, was an open space, where there would be a
dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and mounds of vegetable
refuse, but for such things being thrown anywhere and everywhere in
Rome, and favouring no particular sort of locality. We got into a
kind of wash-house, belonging to a dwelling-house on this spot; and
standing there in an old cart, and on a heap of cartwheels piled
against the wall, looked, through a large grated window, at the
scaffold, and straight down the street beyond it until, in
consequence of its turning off abruptly to the left, our
perspective was brought to a sudden termination, and had a
corpulent officer, in a cocked hat, for its crowning feature.
Nine o’clock struck, and ten o’clock struck, and nothing happened.
All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. A little
parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and chased each
other, in and out among the soldiers. Fierce-looking Romans of the
lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet cloaks, and rags uncloaked,
came and went, and talked together. Women and children fluttered,
on the skirts of the scanty crowd. One large muddy spot was left
quite bare, like a bald place on a man’s head. A cigar-merchant,
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