“I wish you every happiness. Adieu. I beg you to leave me.”
Three or four days after that visit, as I was walking with the Abbé Gama towards the Villa Medicis, he told me deliberately that there would be an execution during the night in the Piazza di Spagna.
“What kind of execution?”
“The bargello or his lieutenant will come to execute some ‘ordine santissimo’, or to visit some suspicious dwelling in order to arrest and carry off some person who does not expect anything of the sort.”
“How do you know it?”
“His eminence has to know it, for the Pope would not venture to encroach upon his jurisdiction without asking his permission.”
“And his eminence has given it?”
“Yes, one of the Holy Father’s auditors came for that purpose this morning.”
“But the cardinal might have refused?”
“Of course; but such a permission is never denied.”