re already casting. In a week or ten days I became quite intimate with
them. One day I said that they were bound in honour to return to the
obedience of their abbot, if only to annul his sentence of
excommunication.

The most obstinate of them told me that the abbot had behaved more like a
despot than a father, and had thus absolved them from their obedience.
"Besides," he said, "no rascally priest has any right to cut off good
Christians from communion with the Saviour, and we are sure that our
patriarch will give us absolution and send us some more monks."

I could make no objection to these arguments; however, I asked on another
occasion on what conditions they would return to Venice.

The most sensible of them said that in the first place the abbot must
withdraw the four hundred thousand ducats which he had entrusted to the
Marquis Serpos at four per cent.

This sum was the capital from which the income of the Convent of St.
Lazarus was derived. The abbot had no right whatever to dispose of it,
even with the consent of a majority among the monks. If the marquis
became bankrupt the convent would be utterly destitute. The marquis was
an Armenian diamond merchant, and a great friend of the abbot's.

I then asked the monks what were the other conditions, and they replied
that these were some matters of discipline which might easily be settled;
they would give me a written statement of their grievances as soon as I
could assure them that the Marquis Serpos was no longer in possession of
their funds.

I embodied my negotiations in writing, and sent the document to the
Inquisitors by the consul. In six weeks I received an answer to the
effect that the abbot saw his way to arranging the money difficulty, but
that he must see a statement of the reforms demanded before doing so.
This decided me to have nothing to do with the affair, but a few words
from Count Wagensberg made me throw it up without further delay. He gave
me to understand that he knew of my attempts to reconcile the four monks
with their abbot, and he told me that he had been sorry to hear the
report, as my success would do harm to a country where I lived and where
I was treated as a friend.

I immediately told him the whole story, assuring him that I would never
have begun the negotiation if I had not been certain of failure, for I
heard on undoubted authority that Serpos could not possibly restore the
four hundred thousand ducats.

This explanation t