“Precisely, because it has not yet been heard. You are stopping your ears, like the Eminentissimo Macchi, Cardinal-Legate of Ravenna, who did not want to hear any more of the affair. But no, no!—and besides, you haven’t the same excuse. Would you like, in connection with this letter, to read the document that goes with it? It is the Italian text of the sentence solemnly pronounced by the Episcopal Tribunal of Faenza, on the 29th of May, 1824; fifty years after this criminal business; all surviving witnesses heard; all inquiries scrupulously made; the Holy Trinity invoked in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.…”
“The devil!” I ventured to exclaim, at a matter beginning with so sacramental a formula.
And I read in Italian what I am going to give here in a translation, and the number of which, 43-242, is that of its place in the Secret Archives of the Vatican.
“Having invoked the most holy Name of God:
“We, seated in our Tribunal, and having before our eyes nothing but God and justice, by our final decision from the pleadings of the lawyers and the documents, we deliver judgment on the action or actions debated before us in the inferior or any other higher Court, between her Excellency Marie Newborough-Sternberg, the Plaintiff, on the one part, and M. le Comte Charles Bandini on the other, acting as legally delegated trustee to represent M.M. le Comte Louis and la Comtesse de Joinville, and any other absent person who has, or claims to have, any interest in the case; these two parties to it having submitted to jurisdiction, in default of the Excellentissime M. le Docteur Thomas Chiappini, domiciled at Florence, who has not so submitted himself.
“Whereas, before our Episcopal Curia acting as a Tribunal competent to judge the ecclesiastic cases named below submitted to their jurisdiction, the Plaintiff has asked that orders may be given, by means of suitable alteration, to correct her baptismal certificate, etc.
“That, on the part of the delegated Trustee Defendant, it is asked that the Plaintiff’s claim should be rejected and the costs repaid. That the other proper Defendant, Doctor Chiappini, has not submitted to jurisdiction, though, according to the custom of this Curia, he has been twice summoned by a Sheriff of the Episcopal Tribunal of Florence, and that the report of contumacy has been added to the decision on the suit.
“Considering the documents, etc.
“Having heard the respective counsel, etc.
“Whereas Lorenzo Chiappini, being near his end, did, in a letter which was given to the Plaintiff after the decease of the aforesaid Chiappini, reveal to the same Plaintiff the secret of her birth, by clearly making known to her that she was not his daughter, but the daughter of a person he declared he could not name.