Vivaldi made no reply, and the Inquisitor, after a momentary silence, added, "Was you ever in the church of the Spirito Santo, at Naples?"
"Before I answer the question," said Vivaldi, "I require the name of my accuser."
"You are to recollect that you have no right to demand any thing in this place," observed the Inquisitor, "nor can you be ignorant that the name of the Informer is always kept sacred from the knowledge of the Accused. Who would venture to do his duty, if his name was arbitrarily to be exposed to the vengeance of the criminal against whom he informs? It is only in a particular process that the Accuser is brought forward."
"The names of the Witnesses?" demanded Vivaldi.
"The same justice conceals them also from the knowledge of the Accused," replied the Inquisitor.
"And is no justice left for the Accused?" said Vivaldi. "Is he to be tried and condemned without being confronted with either his Prosecutor, or the Witnesses!"
"Your questions are too many," said the Inquisitor, "and your answers too few. The Informer is not also the Prosecutor; the Holy Office, before which the information is laid, is the Prosecutor, and the dispenser of justice; its Public Accuser lays the circumstances, and the testimonies of the Witnesses, before the Court. But too much of this."
"How!" exclaimed Vivaldi, "is the tribunal at once the Prosecutor, Witness, and Judge! What can private malice wish for more, than such a court of justice, at which to arraign it's enemy? The stiletto of the Assassin is not so sure, or so fatal to innocence. I now perceive, that it avails me nothing to be guiltless; a single enemy is sufficient to accomplish my destruction."
"You have an enemy then?" observed the Inquisitor.
Vivaldi was too well convinced that he had one, but there was not sufficient proof, as to the person of this enemy, to justify him in asserting that it was Schedoni. The circumstance of Ellena having been arrested, would have compelled him to suspect another person as being at least accessary to the designs of the Confessor, had not credulity started in horror from the supposition, that a mother's resentment could possibly betray her son into the prisons of the Inquisition, though this mother had exhibited a temper of remorseless cruelty towards a stranger, who had interrupted her views for that son.