A Rogue's Tragedy by Bernard Capes — Read

So, the end was near at last! And here, high up among the flying winds and shadows, like old Stylites on his pillar, he stood poised to take his flight. Not self-glorified like that grim evangel; but none the less a martyr to his faith. A martyr, he! He could join in the mad laughter evoked by that image -- the laughter of damned spirits down in the basement. It came reeling and echoing up the stairs to him -- the old Belfry stairs. To what would he descend those next?

There was a frightful humour in the prison nomenclature of his time and country. Speranza, Purgatorio, Costanza, Pazienza, Penitenza -- such were the mocking names they gave their noisome cells, like eating cubicles in a devil's cook-house. They spelt a devouring cruelty. The moral of them all was shattered nerves. They substituted filth and misery for the old "first question," and were scarcely, by design, less demoralising. He who entered one of them had always this much more than his trial to face -- the weapons of his brain blunted against self-defence. They were careful to dull and befoul the wits committed to them.