beneath a dreadful fate, which threatened you also. I managed to save
you. A Venetian noble adopted you; and as I had nothing to live on, I
was obliged to stay on in Venice. My father, a surgeon, whom people
accused of practising forbidden arts as well, taught me hidden
secrets of Nature. As we roamed through the fields and meadows he
told me the properties of many a health-giving plant, of many an
insignificant-looking moss, the hours when they ought to be gathered,
the different ways of mingling their juices. But to this knowledge was
added a special gift, with which Heaven, in its inscrutable providence,
has endowed me. I have the power of often seeing future events, as it
were, in a far-away dim mirror; and, almost without any will of my own,
at such times the unknown Power, which I cannot resist, constrains me
to speak what I thus see, in words often unintelligible to myself. Left
alone in Venice, abandoned by all the world, I bethought me of gaining
my bread by this power of mine. I cured the most dangerous diseases and
maladies in a very short time; and as the mere sight of me produced a
favourable effect upon the sick, a gentle stroking with my hands often
brought on a favourable crisis in a few moments. So my fame was soon
noised abroad through the place, and abundance of money flowed in upon
me. Then awoke the envy of the doctors, the _ciarlatani_, who sold
their pills and potions on the Rialto, the Piazza di San Marco, and the
Zecca, and poisoned the sick instead of curing them. They said I was in
league with the Evil One, and the superstitious folk believed them.
Soon I was apprehended, and brought before the ecclesiastical
tribunals. Oh, my Antonio! how terrible were the tortures with which
they tried to make me admit that this accusation was true. But I was
steadfast. My hair turned white, my body crumpled up to a mummy, my
feet and my hands were paralysed. Then came the rack--that most
ingenious of all inventions of the Spirit of Hell. And this dragged
from me an avowal at the thought of which I still shudder with horror.
They were going to burn me; but when the earthquake shook the
foundations of the palaces and the great prison, the doors of the
underground cell where I was opened of themselves, and I tottered out
of that deep grave through among the stones and rubbish. Ah, Tonino!
you called me an old hag of ninety; but I am scarcely more than fifty
at this day. This skeleton of a body, these crippled f