Amongst those of the snowy linen who most particularly attracted my attention, were a father and son; the former was a tall athletic figure of about thirty, by profession a housebreaker, and celebrated throughout Madrid for the peculiar dexterity which he exhibited in his calling.  He was now in prison for a rather atrocious murder committed in the dead of night, in a house at Caramanchel, in which his only accomplice was his son, a child under seven years of age.  “The apple,” as the Danes say, “had not fallen far from the tree”; the imp was in every respect the counterpart of the father, though in miniature.  He, too, wore the robber shirt sleeves, the robber waistcoat with the silver buttons, the robber kerchief round his brow, and, ridiculous enough, a long Manchegan knife in the crimson faja.  He was evidently the pride of the ruffian father, who took all imaginable care of this chick of the gallows, would dandle him on his knee, and would occasionally take the cigar from his own moustached lips and insert it in the urchin’s mouth.  The boy was the pet of the court, for the father was one of the valientes of the prison, and those who feared his prowess, and wished to pay their court to him, were always fondling the child.  What an enigma is this world of ours!  How dark and mysterious are the sources of what is called crime and virtue!  If that infant wretch become eventually a murderer like his father, is he to blame?  Fondled by robbers, already dressed as a robber, born of a robber, whose own history was perhaps similar.  Is it right?

O, man, man, seek not to dive into the mystery of moral good and evil; confess thyself a worm, cast thyself on the earth, and murmur with thy lips in the dust, Jesus, Jesus!

What most surprised me with respect to the prisoners, was their good behaviour; I call it good when all things are taken into consideration, and when I compare it with that of the general class of prisoners in foreign lands.  They had their occasional bursts of wild gaiety, their occasional quarrels, which they were in the habit of settling in a corner of the inferior court with their long knives; the result not unfrequently being death, or a dreadful gash in the face or the abdomen; but, upon the whole, their conduct was infinitely superior to what might have been expected from the inmates of such a place.  Yet this was not the result of coercion, or any particular care which was exercised over them; for perhaps in no part of the world are prisoners so left to themselves and so utterly neglected as in Spain:  the authorities having no farther anxiety about them, than to prevent their escape; not the slightest attention being paid to their moral conduct and not a thought bestowed upon their health, comfort or mental improvement, whilst within the walls.  Yet in this prison of Madrid, and I may say in Spanish prisons in general, for I have been an inmate of more than one, the ears of the visitor are never shocked with horrid blasphemy