“To make herself famous by defiling the Count de Ricla, who was a model of justice and virtue before knowing this Messalina. If your eminence knew the hideous character of Nina you would not wonder at anything she did.”
“Well, we shall see.”
“Yes.”
About a week later I heard a great noise in the street, and on putting my head out of the window I saw a woman stripped to the waist, and mounted on an ass, being scourged by the hangman, and hooted by a mob of all the biricchini in Bologna. Severini came up at the same moment and informed me that the woman was the chief midwife in Bologna, and that her punishment had been ordered by the cardinal archbishop.
“It must be for some great crime,” I observed.
“No doubt. It is the woman who was with Nina the day before yesterday.”
“What! has Nina been brought to bed?”
“Yes; but of a still-born child.”
“I see it all.”
Next day the story was all over the town.