heartily at Prague six years
ago, on learning that some thin-skinned ladies, on reading my flight from
The Leads, which was published at that date, took great offence at the
above account, which they thought I should have done well to leave out. I
should have left it out, perhaps, in speaking to a lady, but the public
is not a pretty woman whom I am intent on cajoling, my only aim is to be
instructive. Indeed, I see no impropriety in the circumstance I have
narrated, which is as common to men and women as eating and drinking; and
if there is anything in it to shock too sensitive nerves, it is that we
resemble in this respect the cows and pigs.

It is probable that just as my overwhelmed soul gave signs of its failing
strength by the loss of the thinking faculty, so my body distilled a
great part of those fluids which by their continual circulation set the
thinking faculty in motion. Thus a sudden shock might cause instantaneous
death, and send one to Paradise by a cut much too short.

In course of time the captain of the men-at-arms came to tell me that he
was under orders to take me under the Leads. Without a word I followed
him. We went by gondola, and after a thousand turnings among the small
canals we got into the Grand Canal, and landed at the prison quay. After
climbing several flights of stairs we crossed a closed bridge which forms
the communication between the prisons and the Doge's palace, crossing the
canal called Rio di Palazzo. On the other side of this bridge there is a
gallery which we traversed. We then crossed one room, and entered
another, where sat an individual in the dress of a noble, who, after
looking fixedly at me, said, "E quello, mettetelo in deposito:"

This man was the secretary of the Inquisitors, the prudent Dominic
Cavalli, who was apparently ashamed to speak Venetian in my presence as
he pronounced my doom in the Tuscan language.

Messer-Grande then made me over to the warden of The Leads, who stood by
with an enormous bunch of keys, and accompanied by two guards, made me
climb two short flights of stairs, at the top of which followed a passage
and then another gallery, at the end of which he opened a door, and I
found myself in a dirty garret, thirty-six feet long by twelve broad,
badly lighted by a window high up in the roof. I thought this garret was
my prison, but I was mistaken; for, taking an enormous key, the gaoler
opened a thick door lined with iron, three and a half feet high,