THE FOOL ERRANT - World eBook Library - World Public Library

said, "is clement, the Holy Office very patient, but there are bounds. The laws must in all cases be observed. In this case I
suspect the worst. Pray, are you two living in sin?"
Virginia cried, "Oh, father!" and the fact was immediately inscribed; but now I was furious.
"You break all bounds—you who talk of bounds. You are an abominable man."
The priest interposed his person and held up his fat hand. "These prevarications, this violence will not help you. It is idle to deny
the evidence of our eyes, ears, understanding. You—a Venetian, a comedian! I assure you that you are in a very serious
position.."
The landlord raised his hands and let them down with a clatter against his thighs. I was silent, Virginia alarmed, while the officers
consulted together in low murmurs, and the priest filled up the rest of his forms out of his own head. Presently the tall Dominican
addressed us over his spectacles as follows: "You have shown us no reasons whatsoever for believing a word that you say.
Your denial of the relationship in which you obviously stand to one another is extremely flagrant. Nothing but your youth and the
comparative candour of the female stand as your advocates. Thanks to them, and to them alone, we have decided to be more
patient with you than your contumacy deserves. Pending further inquiries, which, I promise you, shall be made in Venice, you,
young man, will be lodged with the Jesuit Fathers; and you, girl, who report yourself as of Siena, will be placed in charge of the
nuns of SS. Maria e Giuseppe sul Prato until you can be safely returned to your nation. That, let me tell you, will not be until you
have shown signs of a less hardened disposition. You will accompany us at once. The seal of the Inquisition shall be placed
upon your effects, which seem trifling. The landlord is warned that he stands in danger of legal process."
Thus were my unhappy prognostications speedily fulfilled! I was helpless and knew it. For a second time those whose dignified
office it was to personify the charity of our Redeemer showed themselves the least charitable of mankind. I was chewing the
sour cud of these reflections when I heard Virginia thanking the officers for their paternal resolves in her regard. Strange girl!
She thanked Heaven, on her knees, for their pious mission, promised them remembrance in her prayers, asked to be allowed to
kiss their hands. This being permitted, was performed to my great disgust, who saw myself disbelieved because I had spoken
the truth, and her believed because she had lied. But when she was allowed, as a grace, to bid me goodbye, and came to me
and put her arms round my neck and kissed my cheeks, crying aloud, "Farewell, thou dear companion of my shame! Do well,
fulfil the pious purposes of these fathers; be sure of me, sure of thyself!" and when I was about to reprove her smartly for her
hypocrisy, she quickly whispered in my ear, "Did you read my falsehood? I am to be put where Aurelia will surely come.
Courage—I will find her—trust your Virginia"—and filled me with confusion. I pressed her hands—the true friend that she was;
for a moment she clung to me with passion. "Forget me not, my lord—pray for me—let me see you again!" Such were her
sobbed and broken prayers—cut short by her unjust judges.
CHAPTER XX. SURPRISING CHANGE IN MY FORTUNES
Father Carnesecchi, of the Society of Jesus, who had charge of the penitents in the college of his Order, and to whom I was
formally handed over by my indurate captor, was a member of an old family of Fiesole long settled in Florence, a thin,
threadbare, humble old man, who kept his eyes fixed to the earth—sharply piercing, intelligent eyes as they could be—and did
his best to keep his lips from speaking. He had a trick of pinching the lower of them, in the hope, I suppose, that the difficulty of
using the upper one alone would hold him silent. But it did not. He talked to himself continually, the habit was inveterate, and as
he never let go of his lower lip it was very difficult to catch what he said. He was a tall man, but stooped at the shoulders, threw
his head forward like a long-necked bird, and nodded as he walked. Beside my Dominican monolith he looked, what he was
far from being, abject and poor-witted. I thought that he bent his head, as if it weighed down to the earth under the pitiless
blows rained upon it by the inquisitor, as without gesture or modulation of the voice, this monstrous man unwound his tale of my
iniquities, which he had taken the trouble to spin, like a cocoon, all about my poor person. If he had twisted a halter of it to hang
me with, I suspect that he had done what he truly desired.
Father Carnesecchi listened to it all in the dejected, musing pose which I have described, words of pity incessantly escaping
from his partly imprisoned mouth: "Dio mio!" "Dio buono!" "Che peccato!" and the like, with fine shades of difference in
expression according to the dark, the denser dark, the lurid flashes of the Dominican's chiaroscuro. This hireling shepherd piled
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