With regard to these denunciations, the Inquisition declares that, in matters of offences against religion, it is the positive and bounden duty of every one to become an accuser. Children may and ought to accuse their parents, wives their husbands, and servants their masters. The law is, according to the decrees of several popes, that whoever becomes acquainted with any offence committed against religion, whether from his own knowledge, or from hearsay, is bound, within fifteen days, to bring forward his accusation before an inquisitor, or the vicar of the Holy Office; or, where these are not present, before a bishop. The crime, whatever it may be, not only attaches to the principal and the accomplices, but also to every one who knows of it and does not reveal it. So that if you, for example, dear reader, should unfortunately belong to the Church of the Inquisition, you would be obliged to accuse not only me, who address you, but all those who, together with yourself, listen to me: and whoever knows that you have listened to my discourses, although he himself may never have heard me, is under the obligation to denounce you to the Inquisition. The punishment for non-observance of this duty is excommunication, which excludes the party subject to it from the benefit of all the sacraments, and shuts him out from the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, besides excommunication, he is liable to be imprisoned in the Inquisition, and to suffer such other punishment as may be deemed necessary. Even the very Cardinals, and the Inquisitors themselves, are not exempt from this obligation; the Pope himself has followed the example. My letters to Gregory XVI. were immediately forwarded to the Inquisition, by his own hand. I have reason to believe that Pius IX. did the same when I wrote to him. All this we may overlook: but that a wife should be obliged to accuse her own husband, or a mother her children, is too dreadful to think of. I will here relate a fact which it always pains me to recall to mind; and which, until the present occasion, I have never before spoken about. During my residence at Viterbo, my native town, where I was public professor and teacher in the College of _Gradi_, I was one day applied to by a lady of prepossessing appearance, whom I then saw for the first time. She requested, with much eagerness, to see me in the sacristy; and as I entered the apartment where she was waiting for me, she begged the sacristan to leave us alone, and suddenly closing the door, presented a moving spectacle to my eyes. Throwing off her bonnet, and letting loose in a moment her long and beautiful tresses, the lady fell upon her knees before me, and gave vent to her grief in abundance of sighs and tears. On my endeavouring to encourage her, and to persuade her to rise and unfold her mind to me, she at length, in a voice broken by sobs, thus addressed me: