Pleasure or religion!  It would have needed a greater than the Pythian Priestess to have given me hopes of either in Florence.  And yet, as we pursued our way, by the Borg’ Ognissanti towards the river, I could not but be struck by the subdued aspect of the citizens, who, far from being the lively impertinents they had been reputed, went gravely and silently about their business, cloaked in sombre black.  They did not stand, as Italians love to do, grouped in the piazzas, chattering, gesticulating and acting as much for their own amusement as for their hearers’; nor did they crowd the chocolate-houses, where, as a rule, the very flies are buzzing the news.  It seemed to me that church doors alone stood open.

There were few ladies abroad, and such as we saw were on the steps of the churches, going in or coming out, and hardly one of them but had a frate—­sometimes two, once four—­in her company.  The number of religious was exorbitant, and even more remarkable was it to observe the respect in which they were held.  Every woman, meeting one, dropped him a curtsey, every man saluted him.  My gentleman, if you please, hardly gave himself the trouble of acknowledging the grace.  I saw a couple of Theatines scolding a poor lady to tears; I saw another shake off a fine gentleman, who ran after him to kiss his hand.  I saw beggars, cripples, sick men in litters, hold out their prayers in vain.  I grew justly indignant.  “Florence is the place for Fra Palamone,” I said to Virginia with bitter foreboding, “rather than for you and me.  It is horrible to think of Aurelia, with her dutiful regard for the saintly calling, bending her knees to these arrogant rascals.”

     “’Bacchetoni e colli torti,
       Tutti il diavol se li porti!’”

said Virginia with scornful nostrils.  “Here you see the end of a nation which shares your pietistical aptitudes.  You think you have God by the foot when you have the devil by the tail.”

“It is true,” I agreed, sighing, “that the more I seek after God and His fairest creature, the more I am encumbered by these distorted botches of His design.  This town swarms with frati.”

“What will you find on a carrion but flies?” cried she.  “The Grand Duke is rotting on his bed, and these are the vermin about him.  Before long he will be dust, and then it will be the turn of Don Gastone, and frati will give place to cicisbei.  Maybe that you won’t find them any more to your liking.”

“I shall leave Florence,” I told her, “so soon as I am assured of Aurelia’s escape from it.”  I heard her sniff of scorn, but did not care to reprove her.

It was not so easy to leave it as to reach it, I found out.  I had not been two hours in my chosen lodging—­a decent place enough—­before I had a visit from the Holy Office.  The terrified landlord ushered three clerics into my room:  two of them Dominicans with forms as big as flags to be filled up from my papers!  The reader knows that I had no papers.  The only passport I had ever had was destroyed; I had no calling but that of pilgrim, with which, as I could not but see, Virginia’s presence consorted oddly; and the objects of my pilgrimage, as I had learned by painful experience, were not such as would commend themselves to the Inquisition.  But while I hesitated, Virginia jumped headlong into the breach.