Messer-Grande made me get into a gondola, and sat down near me with an escort of four men.  When we came to our destination he offered me coffee, which I refused; and he then shut me up in a room.  I passed these four hours in sleep, waking up every quarter of an hour to pass water—­an extraordinary occurrence, as I was not at all subject to stranguary; the heat was great, and I had not supped the evening before.  I have noticed at other times that surprise at a deed of oppression acts on me as a powerful narcotic, but I found out at the time I speak of that great surprise is also a diuretic.  I make this discovery over to the doctors, it is possible that some learned man may make use of it to solace the ills of humanity.  I remember laughing very heartily at Prague six years ago, on learning that some thin-skinned ladies, on reading my flight from The Leads, which was published at that date, took great offence at the above account, which they thought I should have done well to leave out.  I should have left it out, perhaps, in speaking to a lady, but the public is not a pretty woman whom I am intent on cajoling, my only aim is to be instructive.  Indeed, I see no impropriety in the circumstance I have narrated, which is as common to men and women as eating and drinking; and if there is anything in it to shock too sensitive nerves, it is that we resemble in this respect the cows and pigs.

It is probable that just as my overwhelmed soul gave signs of its failing strength by the loss of the thinking faculty, so my body distilled a great part of those fluids which by their continual circulation set the thinking faculty in motion.  Thus a sudden shock might cause instantaneous death, and send one to Paradise by a cut much too short.

In course of time the captain of the men-at-arms came to tell me that he was under orders to take me under the Leads.  Without a word I followed him.  We went by gondola, and after a thousand turnings among the small canals we got into the Grand Canal, and landed at the prison quay.  After climbing several flights of stairs we crossed a closed bridge which forms the communication between the prisons and the Doge’s palace, crossing the canal called Rio di Palazzo.  On the other side of this bridge there is a gallery which we traversed.  We then crossed one room, and entered another, where sat an individual in the dress of a noble, who, after looking fixedly at me, said, “E quello, mettetelo in deposito:” 

This man was the secretary of the Inquisitors, the prudent Dominic Cavalli, who was apparently ashamed to speak Venetian in my presence as he pronounced my doom in the Tuscan language.