taken down, he was carried quite senseless, back to his dungeon, and there, on the third day, death put an end to his sufferings.  The Inquisitor wrote a note to his widow, to desire her to pray for the soul of her late husband, and warn her not to complain of the holy Inquisition, as capable of any injustice or cruelty.  The estate was confiscated to the Inquisition, and a small jointure allowed out of it to the widow.  As they had only been married six months, and some part of the fortune was not yet paid, the inquisitor sent an order to the Constantini family, at Ferno, to pay the holy office, and without delay, what they owed to the late Count Della Torre.  The effects of heretics are all ipso facto confiscated to the Inquisition from the very day, not of their conviction, but of their crime, so that all donations made after that time are void; and whatever they may have given, is claimed by the Inquisition, into whatsoever hands it may have passed; even the fortunes they have given to their daughters in marriage, have been declared to belong to, and are claimed by the Inquisition; nor can it be doubted, that the desire of those confiscations is one great cause of the injustice and cruelty of that court.

The death of the unhappy Count Della Torre was soon publicly known; but no man cared to speak of it, not even his nearest relations, nor so much as to mention his name, lest anything should inadvertently escape them that might be construed into a disapprobation of the proceedings of the most holy tribunal; so great is the awe all men live in of that jealous and merciless court.

The deep impression that the death of my unhappy friend, the barbarous and inhuman treatment he had met with, and the part I had been obliged to act in so affecting a tragedy, made on my mind, got at once the better of my fears, so that, forgetting in a manner the dangers I had till then so much apprehended, I resolved, without further delay to put in execution the design I had formed, of quitting the Inquisition, and bidding forever adieu to Italy.  To execute that design with some safety, I proposed to beg leave to visit the Virgin of Loretto, but thirteen miles distant, and to pass a week there; but in the mean time, to make the best of my way out of the reach of the Inquisition.

Having, therefore, after many conflicts with myself, asked leave to visit the neighboring sanctuary, and obtained it, I set out on horseback the very next morning, leaving, as I proposed to keep the horse, his full value with the owner.  I took the road to Loretto, but turned out of it a short distance from Recanati, after a most violent struggle with myself, the attempt appearing to me at that juncture, quite desperate and impracticable; and the dreadful doom reserved for me should I miscarry, presented itself to my mind in the strongest light.  But the reflection that I had it in my power to avoid being taken alive, and a persuasion that a man in my situation might lawfully avoid it, when every other means failed him, at the expense of his life, revived my staggered resolution; and all my fears ceasing at once, I steered my course, leaving Loretto behind me, to Rocca Contrada, to Fossonbrone, to Calvi in the dukedom of Urbino, and from thence through the Romagna into Bolognese, keeping the by-roads, and at a good distance from the cities through which the high road passed.