THE MAMERTINE PRISON (Nathaniel Hawthorne)
(Esther Singleton, Rome as Described by Great Writers. New York, 1907: 225-228)

We went towards the Forum. I had noticed two or three times an inscription over a mean looking door in this neighbourhood, stating that here was the entrance to the prison of the holy Apostles, Peter and Paul ; and we soon found the spot, not far from the Forum, with two wretched frescoes of the Apostles above the inscription. We knocked at the door without effect; but a lame beggar who sat at another door of the same house (which looked exceedingly like a liquor shop), desired us to follow him, and began to ascend to the Capitol by the causeway leading from the Forum. A little way upward we met a woman, to whom the beggar delivered us over, and she led us into a church or chapel door, and pointed to a long flight of steps, which descended through twilight into utter darkness. She called to somebody in the lower regions, and then went away, leaving us to get down this mysterious staircase by ourselves.

Down we went, farther and farther from the daylight, and found ourselves, anon, in a dark chamber or cell, the shape or boundaries of which we could not make out, though it seemed to be of stone, and black and dungeon - like. Indistinctly, and from a still farther depth in the earth, we heard voices, -- one voice at least, -- apparently not addressing ourselves, but some other persons; and soon directly beneath our feet we saw a glimmering of light through a round, iron-grated hole in the bottom of the dungeon. In a few moments the glimmer and the voice came up through the hole, and the light disappeared, and it and the voice came glimmering and babbling up a flight of stone stairs, of which we had not hitherto been aware. It was the custode with a party of visitors to whom he had been showing St. Peter's dungeon. Each visitor was provided with a wax taper, and the custode gave one to each of us, bidding us wait a moment while he conducted the other party to the upper air. During his absence we examined the cell, as well as our dim lights would permit, and soon found an indentation in the wall, with an iron gate put over it for protection, and an inscription above, informing us that the Apostle Peter had left here the imprint of his visage; and, in truth, there is a profile there -- forehead, nose, mouth and chin -- plainly to be seen, an intaglio in the solid rock. We touched it with the tips of our fingers, as well as saw it with our eyes.

The custode soon returned, and led us down the darksome steps, chattering in Italian all the time. It is not a very long descent to the lower cell, the roof of which is so low that I believe I could have reached it with my hand. We were now in the deepest and ugliest part of the old Mamertine Prison, one of the few remains of the kingly period of Rome, and which served the Romans as a state prison for hundreds of years before the Christian era. A multitude of criminals or innocent persons, no doubt, have languished here in misery, and perished in darkness. Here Jugurtha starved; here Catiline's adherents were strangled; and methinks, there cannot be in the world such another evil den, so haunted with black memories and indistinct surmises of guilt and suffering. In old Rome, I suppose, the citizens never spoke of this dungeon above their breath.

It looks just as bad as it is : -- round, only seven paces across, yet so obscure that our tapers could not illuminate it from side to side -- the stones of which it is constructed being as black as midnight. The custode showed us a stone post, at the side of the cell, with the hole in the top of it, into which, he said, St. Peter's chain had been fastened; and he uncovered a spring of water, in the middle of the stone floor, which he told us had miraculously gushed up to enable the saint to baptize his jailer. The miracle was perhaps the more easily wrought, inasmuch as Jugurtha had found the floor of the dungeon oozy with wet. However, it is best to be as simple and childlike as we can in these matters; and whether St. Peter stamped his visage into the stone, and wrought this other miracle or no, and whether or no he was ever in the prison at all, still the belief of a thousand years and more gives a sort of reality and substance to such traditions. The custode dipped an iron ladle into the miraculous water, and we each of us drank a sip; and what is very remarkable to me, it seemed hard water, and almost brackish, while many persons think it the sweetest in Rome. I suspect that St. Peter still dabbles in this water, and tempers its qualities according to the faith of those who drink it.

The staircase descending into the lower dungeon is comparatively modern, there having been no entrance of old, except through the small circular opening in the roof. In the upper cell the custode showed us an ancient flight of stairs, now built into the wall, which used to lead from the Capitol. The two precincts are now consecrated, and I believe the upper portion -- perhaps both upper and lower -- are a shrine or a chapel.