At Naples the prisoners were divided up. Costantino was taken off to the prison at X. He never again saw his sad companion with the smooth yellow face.

On reaching his destination, Costantino was locked in a cell where he was to pass the first six months of his term in solitary confinement. The cell was barely two yards long by two feet wide. There was nothing in it but a strange folding bed which had to be closed during the day and fastened to the wall. Through a tiny window a patch of sky could be seen.

This was the dreariest period of his imprisonment. Hour after hour, he sat motionless, legs crossed, hands clasped round his knees, but strangely enough he never lost hope or rebelled against his fate. He was convinced he was expiating the mortal sin, as he regarded it, of having lived with a woman to whom he had not been married in church. At the bottom of his heart he still felt certain that one day or the next, after he had atoned for his sin, his innocence would be established and he would be set free.

Meanwhile, though he did not despair, he suffered. He counted the days, the hours, the minutes in the endless exhausting wait for some change that never came. Homesickness dulled his mind and broke his heart. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute he relived his past life in his thoughts, recalling exactly each tiny detail of his distant home. As well as his own grief he suffered Giovanna’s. Transports of tenderness and love shook him from his pensive stillness, and then he would get to his feet and pace about. Because he could not take more than two or three steps, he would stop short and press his head against the wall. These were his moments of utmost desperation.

Then he went back to hoping, to weaving in his mind fantasies of sudden, romantic liberation. Every time the warder entered his cell, Costantino’s heart beat hard in expectation of some happy news.

Sometimes he played morra against himself, taking turns at being winner or loser. Afterwards he laughed at himself, like a child. On other occasions, he studied the palm of his hand at great length, imagining he saw a wide plain split up into smallholdings, with walls, rivers, trees, flocks of sheep, and shepherds, all of which he endowed with a life of exciting adventures.

Sometimes he prayed, counting on his fingers and singing hymns, experimenting and improvising new verses. In the course of this he composed a hymn of four verses, dedicated to Saint Costantino, in which he commended to the saint all prisoners wrongly condemned. The refrain ran:

‘Saint Costantino, we beg mercy

For your condemned innocents!’