Every one will remember the name of Domenico Abbo, who was condemned ten years after the period I am speaking of, for enormous crimes, to be beheaded in the Castle of St. Angelo, at Rome.[38] He was at this time a Dominican friar, Superior and Reader at the little monastery of Nepi, near Rome. I had heard several reports against him, and I went to verify the matter. I found him culpable in many things, and I advised him to renounce his present offices, and to retire to another monastery; repent of his evil ways, and lead a better life; he denied the whole, and turned against me, uttering the bitterest threats. I then suspended him from his ministry, removed him from office, and ordered him to leave in a few days. He appealed to the bishop, the provincial, the general, and got up a certificate from certain persons in the neighbourhood, to prove his good conduct: he even sent some of his friends to intercede with me for pardon, but I could not relax my decree towards one so incorrigibly bad, and I insisted upon his leaving the monastery. He accordingly went to Rome, quitted the Dominican Order, put on the dress of a priest, and was on the point of being made a prelate, through the protection of Cardinal Lambruschini, and the favour of Pope Gregory, then ignorant of the extent of his wickedness; but the Divine justice had prepared to make an example of him. He was guilty of the most enormous and detestable crimes. The facts became public--the people took part against him, and the government was obliged to act promptly in order to calm the popular tumult. One tribunal condemned him to death; another confirmed the sentence; Cardinal Lambruschini was afraid for his own safety; the Pope was obliged to consent, and the wretched man's head rolled on the scaffold. He on that occasion had moved a strong party against me, saying I had persecuted him because he was not of my way of thinking. He excited hatred in many towards me, but I thought no more of him, and the affair, melancholy enough in itself, passed away. This visitation made me acquainted with many things of which I was before ignorant, but which certainly were anything but virtues, either in a Christian, or a citizen; and on my return to Rome, I made known to several persons the effect my visit to the monasteries had produced upon my mind. Meanwhile, I had been sent for by the Cardinal Archbishop of Capua, as preacher of the Lent Sermons in his cathedral. The Father General allowed me to accept the invitation, on condition that I should return immediately, and enter upon my new office. Accordingly I went to Naples, in February 1835; certainly not with the intention of returning to Rome, but, on the contrary, with that of speedily emancipating myself from monkish thraldom. FOOTNOTES: [35] L'Esame ad gradus. _The Dominicans so call the examination for the degree of Doctor of Theology._