“You can put off taking it,” I said, “till the angel enters to set me free; but if you do not then renounce by an oath the infamous trade which has brought you here, and which will end by bringing you to the gallows, I shall leave you in the cell, for so the Mother of God commands, and if you do not obey you will lose her protection.”

As I had expected, I saw an expression of satisfaction on his hideous features, for he was quite certain that the angel would not come.  He looked at me with a pitying air.  I longed to hear the hour strike.  The play amused me intensely, for I was persuaded that the approach of the angel would set his miserable wits a-reeling.  I was sure, also, that the plan would succeed if Lawrence had not forgotten to give the monk the books, and this was not likely.

An hour before the time appointed I was fain to dine.  I only drank water, and Soradaci drank all the wine and consumed all the garlic I had, and thus made himself worse.

As soon as I heard the first stroke of two I fell on my knees, ordering him, in an awful voice, to do the like.  He obeyed, looking at me in a dazed way.  When I heard the first slight noise I examined, “Lo! the angel cometh!” and fell down on my face, and with a hearty fisticuff forced him into the same position.  The noise of breaking was plainly heard, and for a quarter of an hour I kept in that troublesome position, and if the circumstances had been different I should have laughed to see how motionless the creature was; but I restrained myself, remembering my design of completely turning the fellow’s head, or at least of obsessing him for a time.  As soon as I got up I knelt and allowed him to imitate me, and I spent three hours in saying the rosary to him.  From time to time he dozed off, wearied rather by his position than by the monotony of the prayer, but during the whole time he never interrupted me.  Now and again he dared to raise a furtive glance towards the ceiling.  With a sort of stupor on his face, he turned his head in the direction of the Virgin, and the whole of his behaviour was for me the highest comedy.  When I heard the clock strike the hour for the work to cease, I said to him,

“Prostrate thyself, for the angel departeth.”

Balbi returned to his cell, and we heard him no more.  As I rose to my feet, fixing my gaze on the wretched fellow, I read fright on every feature, and was delighted.  I addressed a few words to him that I might see in what state of mind he was.  He shed tears in abundance, and what he said was mostly extravagant, his ideas having no sequence or connection.  He spoke of his sins, of his acts of devotion, of his zeal in the service of St. Mark, and of the work he had done for the Commonwealth, and to this attributed the special favours Mary had shewn him.  I had to put up with a long story about the miracles of the Rosary which his wife, whose confessor was a young Dominican, had told him.  He said that he did not know what use I could make of an ignorant fellow like him.