eeling, and Gamba, perceiving it, said
quietly: "But this is no time to speak of such things."

A moment later the carriage had passed under the great battlemented
gates, with their Etruscan bas-reliefs, and the motto of the house of
Valsecca--Humilitas--surmounted by the ducal escutcheon.

Though the hour was close on noon the streets were as animated as at the
angelus, and the carriage could hardly proceed for the crowd obstructing
its passage. So unusual at that period was such a sight in one of the
lesser Italian cities that Odo turned to Gamba for an explanation. At
the same moment a roar rose from the crowd; and the coach turning into
the Corso which led to the ducal palace and the centre of the town, Odo
caught sight of a strange procession advancing from that direction. It
was headed by a clerk or usher with a black cap and staff, behind whom
marched two bare-foot friars escorting between them a middle-aged man in
the dress of an abate, his hands bound behind him and his head
surmounted by a paste-board mitre inscribed with the title: A Destroyer
of Female Chastity. This man, who was of a simple and decent aspect, was
so dazed by the buffeting of the crowd, so spattered by the mud and
filth hurled at him from a hundred taunting hands, and his countenance
distorted by so piteous a look of animal fear, that he seemed more like
a madman being haled to Bedlam than a penitent making public amends for
his offence.

"Are such failings always so severely punished in Pianura?" Odo asked,
turning ironically to Gamba as the mob and its victim passed out of
sight.

The hunchback smiled. "Not," said he, "if the offender be in a position
to benefit by the admirable doctrines of probabilism, the direction of
intention, or any one of the numerous expedients by which an indulgent
Church has smoothed the way of the sinner; but as God does not give the
crop unless man sows the seed, so His ministers bestow grace only when
the penitent has enriched the treasury. The fellow," he added, "is a man
of some learning and of a retired and orderly way of living, and the
charge was brought against him by a jeweller and his wife, who owed him
a sum of money and are said to have chosen this way of evading payment.
The priests are always glad to find a scape-goat of the sort, especially
when there are murmurs against the private conduct of those in high
places, and the woman, having denounced him, was immediately assured by
her confessor t