ch a glimpse of her.

The patience of the viceroy appears to have been exhausted by these
delays. Being a man of sense, and not a very zealous Catholic, he
determined that even the Church should not shield a criminal so atrocious.
Setting the privileges of the nunnery at defiance, he sent a troop of
soldiers, who broke over the walls, and carried her away _vi et armis_.
The archbishop, Cardinal Pignatelli, was highly indignant, and threatened
to excommunicate and lay the whole city under interdict. All the inferior
clergy, animated by the _esprit du corps_, took up the question, and so
worked upon the superstitious and bigoted people, that they were ready to
rise in a mass to storm the palace of the viceroy and rescue the prisoner.

These were serious difficulties; but the viceroy was not a man to be
daunted. Indeed, he seems to have acted throughout with a rare union of
astuteness, coolness, and energy. To avoid the evil consequences of the
threatened excommunication, he placed a guard round the palace of the
archbishop, judging that the latter would not be so foolish as to launch
out an anathema which would cause the city to be starved, and himself in
it. The market-people would not have dared to come to the city with
provisions so long as it remained under the ban. There would have been too
much inconvenience to himself and his ghostly brethren in such a measure;
and, as the viceroy anticipated, the good cardinal reserved his thunders
for some other occasion.

Still there was the populace. To quiet their clamour and avert the
impending insurrection, the agents of the government adroitly mingled with
the people, and spread abroad a report that Tophania had poisoned all the
wells and fountains of the city. This was enough. The popular feeling was
turned against her immediately. Those who, but a moment before, had looked
upon her as a saint, now reviled her as a devil, and were as eager for her
punishment as they had before been for her escape. Tophania was then put
to the torture. She confessed the long catalogue of her crimes, and named
all the persons who had employed her. She was shortly afterwards
strangled, and her corpse thrown over the wall into the garden of the
convent from whence she had been taken. This appears to have been done to
conciliate the clergy, by allowing them, at least, the burial of one who
had taken refuge within their precincts.

After her death the mania for poisoning seems to have abated;