years, is still an asylum for the infirm and sick, but it is no longer
used as a mad-house. It stands on one of the lone, silent Ferrarese
streets, not far from the Ducal Castle, and it is said that from the
window of his cell the unhappy poet could behold Leonora in her tower.
It may be so; certainly those who can believe in the genuineness of
the cell will have no trouble in believing that the vision of Tasso
could pierce through several brick walls and a Doric portico, and at
last comprehend the lady at her casement in the castle. We entered a
modern gateway, and passed into a hall of the elder edifice, where a
slim young soldier sat reading a romance of Dumas. This was the keeper
of Tasso's prison; and knowing me, by the instinct which teaches an
Italian custodian to distinguish his prey, for a seeker after the True
and Beautiful, he relinquished his romance, lighted a waxen taper,
unbolted a heavy door with a dramatic clang, and preceded me to the
cell of Tasso. We descended a little stairway, and found ourselves in
a sufficiently spacious court, which was still ampler in the poet's
time, and was then a garden planted with trees and flowers. On a low
doorway to the right was inscribed the legend "PRIGIONE DI TASSO," and
passing through this doorway into a kind of reception-cell, we entered
the poet's dungeon. It is an oblong room, with a low wagon-roof
ceiling, under which it is barely possible to stand upright. A single
narrow window admits the light, and the stone casing of this window
has a hollow in a certain place, which might well have been worn there
by the friction of the hand that for seven years passed the prisoner
his food through the small opening. The young custodian pointed to
this memento of suffering, without effusion, and he drew my attention
to other remarkable things in the cell, without troubling himself
to palliate their improbability in the least. They were his stock in
trade; you paid your money, and took your choice of believing in
them or not. On the other hand, my _portier_, an ex-_valet de place_,