The rector, after examining the localities and submitting to a lengthy interrogatory first my accomplice, who very naturally was considered as the most guilty, and then myself, whom nothing could convict of the offence, ordered us to get up and go to church to attend mass.  As soon as we were dressed, he came back, and addressing us both, he said, kindly: 

“You stand both convicted of a scandalous connivance, and it is proved by the fact of the lantern having been wilfully extinguished.  I am disposed to believe that the cause of all this disorder is, if not entirely innocent, at least due only to extreme thoughtlessness; but the scandal given to all your comrades, the outrage offered to the discipline and to the established rules of the seminary, call loudly for punishment.  Leave the room.”

We obeyed; but hardly were we between the double doors of the dormitory than we were seized by four servants, who tied our hands behind us, and led us to the class room, where they compelled us to kneel down before the great crucifix.  The rector told them to execute his orders, and, as we were in that position, the wretches administered to each of us seven or eight blows with a stick, or with a rope, which I received, as well as my companion, without a murmur.  But the moment my hands were free, I asked the rector whether I could write two lines at the very foot of the cross.  He gave orders to bring ink and paper, and I traced the following words: 

“I solemnly swear by this God that I have never spoken to the seminarist who was found in my bed.  As an innocent person I must protest against this shameful violence.  I shall appeal to the justice of his lordship the patriarch.”

My comrade in misery signed this protest with me; after which, addressing myself to all the pupils, I read it aloud, calling upon them to speak the truth if any one could say the contrary of what I had written.  They, with one voice, immediately declared that we had never been seen conversing together, and that no one knew who had put the lamp out.  The rector left the room in the midst of hisses and curses, but he sent us to prison all the same at the top of the house and in separate cells.  An hour afterwards, I had my bed, my trunk and all my things, and my meals were brought to me every day.  On the fourth day, the Abbe Tosello came for me with instructions to bring me to Venice.  I asked him whether he had sifted this unpleasant affair; he told me that he had enquired into it, that he had seen the other seminarist, and that he believed we were both innocent; but the rector would not confess himself in the wrong, and he did not see what could be done.

I threw off my seminarist’s habit, and dressed myself in the clothes I used to wear in Venice, and, while my luggage was carried to a boat, I accompanied the abbe to M. Grimani’s gondola in which he had come, and we took our departure.  On our way, the abbe ordered the boatman to leave my things at the Palace Grimani, adding that he was instructed by M. Grimani to tell me that, if I had the audacity to present myself at his mansion, his servants had received orders to turn me away.