"No," he replied; "I was disgusted with a great many things; but I thought it my duty to write, or rather to repeat them, because, having been asserted so long ago, they are now known and believed by everybody." "Now, my dear uncle, do not say by everybody, for there are ourselves in this very place, who believe nothing about them; and who knows how many others may not have the same good sense? Why should we, then, seek to deceive the ingenuous and simple-minded, particularly the young, who would no longer read the old trash about this said St. Rosa, unless it were dressed up in the pleasing garb of a good style, and written with a show of historical erudition? Is it not a pity--nay, a sin?" "But if I were not to relate what has been already written and handed down, what would there be to make a life of?" "Little, I grant; my friend; little, but good. I should give the simple truth. This same Rosa was a very worthy creature, and a woman of spirit for the age in which she lived; full of courage, and loved her country as much as any one. The priests represent her as devoted to the pope; but I, on the contrary, maintain that she was devoted chiefly to politics, and only in a secondary degree to matters of religion. In fact, the people of Viterbo were almost all _Patareni_;[51] and yet, between the pope and the emperor, they held most to the pope, because he did not, like the Emperor, threaten the liberty of the commune, by imposing upon them any particular code of laws, but allowed the people to govern themselves by their own institutions. In short, to me the actions of St. Rosa appear so entirely mixed up with the political events of her time, that if I were writing her life, I should connect it with the history of that period, merely as an episode." "And who would you get to read it?" "Everybody, except a few bigots; but perhaps it is for them you are writing?"