"Oh, let us go," answered Julia. "I shall not feel in safety till I have left this land behind me."
"Come, then, let us to horse at once," said Gowrie. "We can go on with some of the men; and the rest can follow with the baggage after. Methinks they wont subject doublets and cloaks to the holy office, so that we can leave them in safety."
The plan was no sooner proposed than executed. The host's bill was paid, the horses saddled, and the three gentlemen of the party, with Julia and the girl who had been hired to accompany her, set out just as the sun had sunk below the horizon. The stars looked out clear and bright upon their path, and with a glad heart Julia passed an old tower, even then deserted, which marked the boundary of the territories of Piacenza and Voghera, then, as now, under distinct and separate rule. Her spirits rose; and though she had been somewhat silent during the first few miles of the ride, she now questioned Sir John Hume, who was on her right hand, regarding all he had seen at Padua. He answered gaily and lightly, evading her questions, for he did not like to tell her that the house which had been so long her home had been completely pillaged on the day that she fled from Padua. She soon saw that he was unwilling to satisfy her; and fancy filled up but too truly the mere vague outline that he gave. With regard to her poor old servant Tita, however, she was determined to hear more; and there the young gentleman had less scruple in affording her every information.
"Oh, as to dearly beloved Tita," he said, "she has done exceedingly well. She fairly and boldly encountered and defeated all the old women in black gowns that the university could send against her. She bullied the professors, rated the inquisitor, and nearly scratched the eyes out of the faces of the officers. She told old Martinelli to his beard, that if people had not suspected him of unlawful studies he never would have tried to cast the imputation upon others; and as to her old lord and young lady, they had much less to do with evil spirits than others she could mention, who, people said, kept books written with blood, and used to raise up the image of a child out of a pot of boiling water. The old fool got frightened out of his wits, and made his exit from the house as fast as possible, not knowing what she would charge him with next, and fearing that part of the storm which he had helped to raise might fall upon himself. Every one after was afraid to meddle with bold Tita, and she remained mistress of the field. She is now very comfortably established in a small house by the market-place, and is looked upon with great reverence as one of the heroes of Padua."
"It is really strange how men can be so mad and foolish," said the earl. "Spirits must be very weak and powerless to submit themselves to the sway of feeble old men, or half-crazed old women."
"Or have a very strange taste in female beauty," rejoined Hume, "to fall in love with wrinkles, gray hair, and more beard than is becoming on a lady's chin; but these events promise to raise a grand scholastic dispute in Padua, for already the parties are arraying themselves for and against the existence of magic at all. Antonelli has announced a lecture on the non-existence of magic, and when one of the doctors hinted that such an opinion was heretical, he turned the tables upon the persecutors, by giving the two parties the names of magicians and anti-magicians, so that Martinelli and his faction are now universally known by the title of the magicians, much to their horror and confusion."
"But we have the warrant of Scripture," said Mr. Rhind, gravely, "for asserting that magic has really existed. Balaam, the son of Balak, when he was called to curse the children of Israel, distinctly spoke of it as an art which he himself practised."
"Are you sure it was not Balaam's ass?" asked Sir John Hume, laughing; "I am sure no one would practise it in the present day but an ass. I don't know what they did then."
Mr. Rhind, however, though silenced, was not satisfied. He had listened to the whole conversation with great attention; and combining what he then heard with words which had at times dropped from both the earl and Julia, he perceived the nature of the charge against her, and felt sadly oppressed in mind thereby. It is true he had seen nothing in her but beauty, sweetness, and rational devotion; he had discovered that she always carried with her a Bible in the English tongue; but still fully impressed, as most men were in his day, with a belief that such a thing as magic really existed, he felt grieved and uneasy on account of his pupil's long intimacy with Manucci, who, he now found, had been accused of practising unlawful arts. He tried on the following morning, by what he thought skilful questions, to extract more information from Sir John Hume; but he was, by nature, so simple, that Hume foiled him at every turn by a repartee, and the same night, eager to hurry on towards Scotland by longer and more rapid journeys than Julia could undertake, the young knight left his companions to follow, and hastened on towards France, leaving Mr. Rhind to brood over his own conclusions with bitterness and apprehension.