In the mean while my enemies grew more and more uneasy every day, and were more and more disappointed. Did they attack me on one side? They were speedily put to confusion. On the other? It frequently happened they inflicted injury on themselves alone. Often, I believe, they despaired altogether of accomplishing their evil intentions towards me. One only method remained, by means of which, secretly and securely, and without danger of being discovered by myself or my protectors, they might effect their object; and this was the Inquisition: for in that place no one, not even the dearest friend, can afford protection or support. There every accusation has to be fully entered into. The accuser gives his name to the tribunal, which for its own part affects to be ignorant of it. The same with the witnesses. Rarely does it happen that they are examined a second time. Their first deposition is sufficient. They began in this manner with respect to myself, in order to undermine the edifice they were determined to destroy; and the first attack against me was made at Viterbo, in concert with certain parties in Rome, and some of the Dominicans from Naples, who were also invited to lend their assistance. But observe the foolishness and blindness of men! They who wielded this powerful weapon against me, thought to destroy me with it; instead of which, they were the means of giving me fresh life. They undertook to explain to others my profession of faith, which I had not yet been able to make out clearly to myself. They reared the structure in the most solemn manner, before the Inquisition, that they themselves might no longer doubt, and that the memory of my conversion from Papacy to pure Christianity, which began about the year 1830, from which epoch the earliest of my accusations are dated, might for ever be preserved. May the Lord be praised! Why do not my present enemies publish these facts in the manner in which they took place? I should like to see the secret accusations against me openly detailed. Instead of falsely framing charges of immorality which never existed, let them state my real crimes. They might show "that in point of religious belief I could not depart from the Holy Scriptures; that my Christianity did not extend beyond the Bible; that I was greatly opposed to the later doctrines of the Roman Church; that my theology had existed eighteen centuries, neither more nor less; and that every article that did not conform itself to this old theology, I neither owned for doctrine, nor for Christianity." Such was the epitome with which a Dominican friar of Naples wound up a lengthened declamation, to prove that I was, reader, guess what--a _Neoterico_--a _Novatore_.