haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and
suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this
dungeon above their breath. It looks just as bad as it is; round, only
seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate
it from side to side,-- the stones of which it is constructed being as
black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of
the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St.
Peter's chain had been fastened; and he uncovered a spring of water, in
the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed
up to enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle was perhaps
the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the
dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike
as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into
the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he
ever was in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and
more gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The
custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us
drank a sip; and, what is very remarkable, to me it seemed hard water and
almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I
suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its
qualities according to the faith of those who drink it.

The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern,
there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular
opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient
flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the
Capitol. The whole precincts are now consecrated, and I believe the
upper portion, perhaps both upper and lower, are a shrine or a chapel.

I now left S------ in the Forum, and went to call on Mr. J. P. K------ at