"You break all bounds—you who talk of bounds. You are an abominable man."
The priest interposed his person and held up his fat hand. "These prevarications, this violence will not help you. It is idle to deny the evidence of our eyes, ears, understanding. You—a Venetian, a comedian! I assure you that you are in a very serious position.."
The landlord raised his hands and let them down with a clatter against his thighs. I was silent, Virginia alarmed, while the officers consulted together in low murmurs, and the priest filled up the rest of his forms out of his own head. Presently the tall Dominican addressed us over his spectacles as follows: "You have shown us no reasons whatsoever for believing a word that you say. Your denial of the relationship in which you obviously stand to one another is extremely flagrant. Nothing but your youth and the comparative candour of the female stand as your advocates. Thanks to them, and to them alone, we have decided to be more patient with you than your contumacy deserves. Pending further inquiries, which, I promise you, shall be made in Venice, you, young man, will be lodged with the Jesuit Fathers; and you, girl, who report yourself as of Siena, will be placed in charge of the nuns of SS. Maria e Giuseppe sul Prato until you can be safely returned to your nation. That, let me tell you, will not be until you have shown signs of a less hardened disposition. You will accompany us at once. The seal of the Inquisition shall be placed upon your effects, which seem trifling. The landlord is warned that he stands in danger of legal process."
Thus were my unhappy prognostications speedily fulfilled! I was helpless and knew it. For a second time those whose dignified office it was to personify the charity of our Redeemer showed themselves the least charitable of mankind. I was chewing the sour cud of these reflections when I heard Virginia thanking the officers for their paternal resolves in her regard. Strange girl! She thanked Heaven, on her knees, for their pious mission, promised them remembrance in her prayers, asked to be allowed to kiss their hands. This being permitted, was performed to my great disgust, who saw myself disbelieved because I had spoken the truth, and her believed because she had lied. But when she was allowed, as a grace, to bid me goodbye, and came to me and put her arms round my neck and kissed my cheeks, crying aloud, "Farewell, thou dear companion of my shame! Do well, fulfil the pious purposes of these fathers; be sure of me, sure of thyself!" and when I was about to reprove her smartly for her hypocrisy, she quickly whispered in my ear, "Did you read my falsehood? I am to be put where Aurelia will surely come. Courage—I will find her—trust your Virginia"—and filled me with confusion. I pressed her hands—the true friend that she was; for a moment she clung to me with passion. "Forget me not, my lord—pray for me—let me see you again!" Such were her sobbed and broken prayers—cut short by her unjust judges.
CHAPTER XX
SURPRISING CHANGE IN MY FORTUNES
Father Carnesecchi, of the Society of Jesus, who had charge of the penitents in the college of his Order, and to whom I was formally handed over by my indurate captor, was a member of an old family of Fiesole long settled in Florence, a thin, threadbare, humble old man, who kept his eyes fixed to the earth—sharply piercing, intelligent eyes as they could be—and did his best to keep his lips from speaking. He had a trick of pinching the lower of them, in the hope, I suppose, that the difficulty of using the upper one alone would hold him silent. But it did not. He talked to himself continually, the habit was inveterate, and as he never let go of his lower lip it was very difficult to catch what he said. He was a tall man, but stooped at the shoulders, threw his head forward like a long-necked bird, and nodded as he walked. Beside my Dominican monolith he looked, what he was far from being, abject and poor-witted. I thought that he bent his head, as if it weighed down to the earth under the pitiless blows rained upon it by the inquisitor, as without gesture or modulation of the voice, this monstrous man unwound his tale of my iniquities, which he had taken the trouble to spin, like a cocoon, all about my poor person. If he had twisted a halter of it to hang me with, I suspect that he had done what he truly desired.
Father Carnesecchi listened to it all in the dejected, musing pose which I have described, words of pity incessantly escaping from his partly imprisoned mouth: "Dio mio!" "Dio buono!" "Che peccato!" and the like, with fine shades of difference in expression according to the dark, the denser dark, the lurid flashes of the Dominican's chiaroscuro. This hireling shepherd piled up a hideous indictment, made up, as the reader will perceive, out of his own wicked imagination. I was a runaway from the Venetian galleys, an actor of execrable life. I had seduced a Sienese nun in Padua, and brought her with me into Tuscany to sow contempt of the sacraments, and rebellion against the reigning house. I had openly advocated the worship of Priapus, had spurned the marriage vow, had called one of the reigning house a tyrant, and was an apologist of the Paterini. He concluded by saying that the Holy Office was deliberating upon my case, and that he could not invite the Jesuits to hope for my conversion, since I openly boasted of being a comedian, and of my preference for that deplorable way of life. The Holy Office asked that I might be kept apart from any whom my conversation might contaminate, and that my punishment should be exemplary as well as remedial. To all of which Father Carnesecchi replied, "Altto, altro, caro fratello," and got rid of his monitor as soon as he could. I was not conscious that he had given me a single glance of the eye, did not suppose that he knew or cared whether I stood ashamed, sullen, indifferent or indignant under my accuser's blows. Anger possessed me altogether, and if I thought of my new gaoler at all it was to suppose him seeing in me a subject, common in his experience, whose degrading punishment of stocks, whip or pillory was to be stuccoed over with a mockery of religion. Judge, therefore, of my surprise when, having bowed the inquisitor out of the door, Father Carnesecchi returned to the room, and putting his hand upon my shoulder, said in excellent English, and the tone of a loving parent, "And now, my poor boy, let me have the truth." The unexpected kindness, the charity, the unexpected, beloved speech unnerved me. I flushed, stammered some foolish protest, burst into tears. The good Jesuit let my emotion have its fling.
Kneeling then at his knees, with my hands folded in his, I told him the whole of my story, hiding nothing at all, not even Virginia's ruse for obtaining sight and speech with Aurelia, supposing her to be in the Sienese convent. Having laid bare every recess of my recent life, and not spared myself either in the recital, I went on to say that whatever might come of it, I must never abandon my search for the lovely, hapless, innocent Aurelia; for, as I assured him in conclusion, and undoubtedly believed, unless I found Aurelia and received her pardon, I should die; and there was no justice under Heaven if a man, sincerely repentant, were suffered to expire unredeemed.
"My son," said Father Carnesecchi, who had nodded his way through an harangue which I had (I can assure the reader) treated very summarily indeed, "it was in a good hour that you were led to me; for I am in a position to be of service to you. I am no stranger to your country, nor indeed to your ancient house. Many times have I said Mass in that of your mother's family—the noble house of Arundell. I shall be able, therefore, to make a good case for you with your resident at this Court; I can recommend you to a banker, I can extenuate (so far as truth will allow) your follies to your parents, and I can give you absolution when you have done a proper penance. All these things I will do, but on conditions. My first is that you write respectfully and penitently to your father; my next that you do the same duty to the outraged Professor Lanfranchi, and my third that you leave your Donna Aurelia to me. Am I clear?" "Father," I said, "you are as clear as the light of Heaven. I agree to all your conditions, but shall beg of you one thing—and that is, that you do not prevent my seeing her once more."