I fainted from the effort to restrain myself.  This happened several times.  At one moment I flew into a rage, and prayed to God to help me; at another I felt lifted from the ground, and forced to go and gaze on him.  Sometimes when the fit was on me, I tore my hair; I even thought of killing myself.’  Virginia was surrounded by persons who had an interest in helping Osio.  Not only the confessor, who was a man of infamous character, but her friends among the nuns, themselves accustomed to intrigue of a like nature, led her down the path to ruin.  False keys were made, and one or other of the faithless sisters introduced the young man into the convent at night.  When Virginia resisted, and enlarged upon the sacrilege of breaking cloister, Arrigone supplied her with a printed book of casuistry, in which it was written that though it might be sinful for a nun to leave her convent, there was no sin in a man entering it.  At last she fell; and for seven years she lived in close intimacy with her lover, passing the nights with him, either in his own house or in one of the cells of S. Margherita.  On one occasion, when he had to fly from justice, the girls concealed him in their rooms for fifteen days.  The first fruit of this amour was a stillborn child; after giving birth to which, Virginia sold all the silver she possessed, and sent a votive tablet to Our Lady of Loreto, on which she had portrayed a nun and baby, kneeling and weeping.  ’Twice again I sent the same memorial to our Lady, imploring the grace of liberation from this passion.  But the sorceries with which I was surrounded, prevailed.  In my bed were found the bones of the dead, hooks of iron, and many other things, of which the nuns were well informed.  Nay, I would fain have given up my life to save my soul; and so great were my afflictions, that in despair I went to throw myself into the well, but was restrained by the image of the Virgin at the bottom of the garden, for which I had a special devotion.’  In course of time she gave birth to a little girl, named Francesca, who frequented the convent, and whom Osio legitimated as his child.

It was impossible that a connection of long standing, known to several accomplices, and corroborated by the presence of the child Francesca, should remain hidden from the world.  People began to speak about the fact in Monza.  A druggist, named Reinaro Soncini, gossiped somewhat too openly.  Osio had him shot one night by a servant in his pay.

And now the lovers were engaged in a career of crime, which brought them finally to justice.  Virginia’s waiting-woman Caterina fell into disgrace with her mistress, and was shut up in a kind of prison by her orders.  The girl declared that she would bring the whole bad affair before the superior authorities, and would do so immediately, seeing that Monsignor Barca, the Visitor of S. Margherita, was about to make one of his official tours of inspection.