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In the adjoining cell sat a skeleton found as we saw it with its neck in the clutch of the garrote, which was one of Ecelino's more merciful punishments; while in still another cell the ferocity of the tyrant appeared in the penalty inflicted upon the wretch whose skeleton had been hanging for ages as we saw it head downwards from the ceiling.
The Ecelino prisons were destroyed when the Crusaders took Padua, with the exception of the tower, which the Venetian Republic converted into an observatory." "But at least these prisons are on the site of Ecelino's castle?" "Nothing of the sort. His castle in that case would have been outside of the old city walls." "And those tortures and the prisons are all" "Things got up for show.
Wounded and taken prisoner, the soldiers of the victorious army gathered about him, and heaped insult and reproach upon him; and one furious peasant, whose brother's feet had been cut off by Ecelino's command, dealt the helpless monster four blows upon the head with a scythe.
The food we saw was of course not the original food. At last we came to the crowning horror of Villa P , the supreme excess of Ecelino's cruelty. The guide entered the cell before us, and, as we gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper vividly upon a block that stood in the middle of the floor.
We found the cells, though narrow and dark, not uncomfortable, and the guide conceded that they had undergone some repairs since Ecelino's time. But all the horrors for which we had come were there in perfect grisliness, and labeled by the ingenious Signor P with Latin inscriptions. In the first cell was a shrine of the Virgin, set in the wall.
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