"Leave him altogether. He must never know what has passed between us. Signora, I have prevented you from betraying your husband, and you tell me I have restored you to life. Will you then betray me? I do not think so. God be with you; I shall immediately burn these papers from the Inquisition, along with the letter you have brought me; and their contents will be buried in your breast."

"Oh! yes, there they shall remain, and with a lasting recollection of yourself. Farewell."

"Farewell."

In relating this story I have not hesitated about going into particulars, since no one now can injure the good lady, who is gone to her eternal rest. She lived a few years after this adventure, and wrote to me occasionally. She died like a good Christian, loving Jesus her Redeemer, and believing in his good tidings, and detesting, with all her heart, the errors of the Church of Rome. In one of her letters she told me that her old confessor, a few months after her visit to me, came to her to inquire whether she had delivered the letter from the Inquisition; and that, fearing to compromise me, she was puzzled to find an answer. She did not so much regard her own danger, and therefore replied as follows:—"Signore, do not talk to me any more of this business: Father Achilli has too much good sense to trouble his head at all about the Inquisition: consequently, the letter found its way into the fire. What would you have me do more? For a woman I think I have done quite enough." This answer, which did not involve any falsehood, left the confessor in doubt, without furnishing him with the means of injuring either of us. He subsequently interrogated her again on this point, and all the reply he obtained was: "I know nothing about it; I have told you not to talk to me about it any more." I was myself questioned on the subject ten years afterwards, at the time I was in the Inquisition; and I got out of the affair by saying, as was the fact, that I had never received any accusation from the lady—with respect to the letter itself I was silent.

But what cruelty, what malignity does not this case reveal! To pervert the natural feelings of the heart, so as to induce a wife not only to accuse her husband, but to spy out his most secret thoughts, the very inmost of his mind, and to disclose what might peril his very life! I have only given one instance, but I could relate many more of the same character. The wife of a bricklayer, whose name I never knew, about the same time, came to me at Viterbo, to accuse her husband by order of her confessor. She came from Vitorchiano, a fief of the Roman Senate. I sent her away, however, telling her I had nothing to do with the Inquisition. Several came to me from other parts—no fewer than four or five; and all these were wives, who had come to denounce their husbands to the Inquisition. I took care to give them all the same answer. And if so many cases of this sort came to my own knowledge, how many more must there have been, who applied to the Vicars themselves, or to the Inquisitors of the Holy Office!

In my time, there was a report that in Ancona two Inquisitors had seduced certain wives and daughters, in order to induce them to accuse their respective husbands and fathers. In the year 1842, in the month of September, having left the Roman States, I was at Ancona, from which place I embarked for Corfu. And it was during my stay in the former place, that an Inquisitor endeavoured to persuade two virtuous girls to accuse their uncle of some alleged profanation, in order to have a pretext for his imprisonment. The Inquisitor was angry with this honest man, because he had forbidden him his house; and thought, by throwing him into prison, to be able at all hours to visit the nieces, imagining they were favourably disposed towards him. But they were much better than he was; they threatened him with publishing his dishonest proposals, and so the matter ended. This same Inquisitor is famous for his persecution of the Jews. His edict against them, published in 1843, is known to all the world. In it all the Jews under his jurisdiction—that is, not only those of Ancona, who are very numerous, but those also of Pesaro, Osimo, Sinigaglia, Loretto, &c.—are ordered, within the term of three months, to sell all their possessions in land or houses, under penalty of confiscation; within eight days to abandon all their shops outside the Ghetto;[26] and within three days to dismiss from their houses all their Christian servants, both male and female, even the nurses of their children. They were prohibited to sleep a single night out of the Ghetto; to take a single meal, or to hold any communication with a Christian. Nay, to the shame and disgrace of the Inquisition be it spoken, these children of Israel and of Judah were even prohibited from singing the Psalms of David, in their service for the burial of their dead.

That so precious a document might not be lost, I took care to have it reprinted at Corfu, from the authentic copy that was sent to me by the Secretary of the Lord High Commissioner; and, as my readers will easily believe, I wrote my observations upon it pretty strongly, not only as to its author, but also as to the whole tribe of the Inquisitori.[27] I was desirous of knowing what was generally thought to be the reason of the publication of this edict. A letter from Ancona on the subject, stated as follows:—

"The Father Inquisitor is a person of very licentious habits, and at the same time extremely greedy of money. He became offended with our women (the Jewesses) because they would not listen to his propositions; he allured, he threatened, but could never render them subservient to his desires. At length he took a fresh occasion of offence against us, because we refused to pay him a considerable sum of money which he claimed, and not for the first time; saying that his predecessor had had many such donations, that it was for that reason he had looked upon us favourably, and that, if we did not make him similar acknowledgments, we need not expect any service or consideration from him. After due deliberation upon the matter, however, it was resolved that we should not give him any thing; and now see what has happened!"

The predecessor of this personage is well known to everybody, as having extorted as much money as he possibly could, brought many respectable persons into trouble, seduced many women, and finally fled from his situation, to seek an asylum in Tuscany.

The Inquisitor of Ancona does not act differently from his brethren. Any one who wished to write a history, not of the Inquisition, but of the actual Inquisitors in the Roman States, need only take the trouble to ask what is thought of them from Rome to Bologna; in Umbria, La Marca, Romagna; in short, wherever there is an Inquisitor or a Vicar of the Holy Office—and he will hear some extraordinary stories, which would disgrace the most scandalous chronicle.