terviews with a woman named Brigida (of whom he
had some previous knowledge ), who was ready and anxious, from motives
of private malice, to personate the deceased countess at the masquerade.
This woman had suggested that some anonymous letters to Fabio would pave
the way in his mind for the approaching impersonation, and had written
the letters herself. However, even when all the preparations were made,
the writer declared that he shrank from proceeding to extremities; and
that he would have abandoned the whole project but for the woman Brigida
informing him one day that a work-girl named Nanina was to be one of the
attendants at the ball. He knew the count to have been in love with this
girl, even to the point of wishing to marry her; he suspected that her
engagement to wait at the ball was preconcerted; and, in consequence, he
authorized his female accomplice to perform her part in the conspiracy.

The sixth section detailed the proceedings at the masquerade, and
contained the writer's confession that, on the night before it, he had
written to the count proposing the reconciliation of a difference that
had taken place between them, solely for the purpose of guarding himself
against suspicion. He next acknowledged that he had borrowed the key of
the Campo Santo gate, keeping the authority to whom it was intrusted in
perfect ignorance of the purpose for which he wanted it. That purpose
was to carry out the ghastly delusion of the wax mask (in the very
probable event of the wearer being followed and inquired after) by
having the woman Brigida taken up and set down at the gate of the
cemetery in which Fabio's wife had been buried.

The seventh section solemnly averred that the sole object of the
conspiracy was to prevent the young nobleman from marrying again, by
working on his superstitious fears; the writer repeating, after this
avowal, that any such second marriage would necessarily destroy
his project for promoting the ultimate restoration of the Church
possessions, by diverting Count Fabio's property, in great part,
from his first wife's child, over whom the priest would always have
influence, to another wife and probably other children, over whom he
could hope to have none.

The eighth and last section expressed the writer's contrition for having
allowed his zeal for the Church to mislead him into actions liable to
bring scandal on his cloth; reiterated in the strongest language his
conviction that, whatever migh