, I advise you to leave this place forthwith.  I dare say you are getting tired of it.  You are this moment free to depart; repair at once to your lodgings, where, I promise you, that no one shall be permitted to interrupt you for the future.  It is getting late, and the prison doors will speedily be closed for the night.  Vamos, Don Jorge, a la casa, a la posada!

Myself.—“But Paul said unto them, they have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily?  Nay, verily: but let them come themselves and fetch us out.”

I then bowed to the juez, who shrugged his shoulders and took snuff.  On leaving the apartment I turned to the alcayde, who stood at the door: “Take notice,” said I, “that I will not quit this prison till I have received full satisfaction for being sent hither uncondemned.  You may expel me if you please, but any attempt to do so shall be resisted with all the bodily strength of which I am possessed.”

“Your worship is right,” said the alcayde with a bow, but in a low voice.

Sir George, on hearing of this affair, sent me a letter in which he highly commended my resolution not to leave the prison for the present, at the same time begging me to let him know if there were anything that he could send me from the embassy to render my situation more tolerable.

I will now leave for the present my own immediate affairs, and proceed to give some account of the prison of Madrid and its inmates.

The Carcel de la Corte, where I now was, though the principal prison of Madrid, is one which certainly in no respect does credit to the capital of Spain.  Whether it was originally intended for the purpose to which it is at present applied, I have no opportunity of knowing.  The chances, however, are, that it was not; indeed it was not till of late years that the practice of building edifices expressly intended and suited for the incarceration of culprits came at all into vogue.  Castles, convents, and deserted palaces, have in all countries, at different times, been converted into prisons, which practice still holds good upon the greater part of the continent, and more particularly in Spain and Italy, which accounts, to a certain extent, for the insecurity of the prisons, and the misery, want of cleanliness, and unhealthiness which in general pervade them.

I shall not attempt to enter
