I.

It was one of the fatalities of travel, rather than any real interest in the poet, which led me to visit the prison of Tasso on the night of our arrival, which was mild and moonlit.  The portier at the Stella d’Oro suggested the sentimental homage to sorrows which it is sometimes difficult to respect, and I went and paid this homage in the coal-cellar in which was never imprisoned the poet whose works I had not read.

The famous hospital of St. Anna, where Tasso was confined for seven 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, pumped a softly murmuring stream of enthusiasm; and expressed the freshest delight in the inspection of each object of interest.