"We will be ready! we will be ready!" responded heartily the three hundred, and in a few moments the ruins were left to their former obscure and fearful solitude. What a wild, improbable story, methinks we hear some of our readers remark, as they sit beside their safe coal fires in free England or the United States. But Popery has not been dominant in England since James II.'s time, and they I have forgotten it. Let them hear that in the year 1848, when a Republican government was established in France, which was the signal of a general revolutionary movement throughout Europe, the present Pope was forced to escape in the disguise of a menial, and a national government granted, for the first time in Rome, religious toleration, one of the first orders of the Roman republic was that the nuns should be liberated, and the convents searched. Guiseppe Garibaldi, in 1849, then recently arrived in Rome, visited himself every convent, and was present during the whole of the investigations. In all, without an exception, he found instruments of torture; and in all, without an exception, were vaults, plainly dedicated to the reception of the bones of infants. Statistics prove that in no city is there so great a number of children born out of wedlock as in Rome; and it is in Rome also that the greatest number of infanticides take place. This must ever be the case with a wealthy unmarried priesthood and a poor and _ignorant_ population. CHAPTER VI. THE ARREST We took leave of Manlio at the moment when Gianni had delivered his master's message. The sculptor acceded to the Cardinal's request, and, after an interview with him, proceeded to execute the order for the statuettes. For some days nothing occurred to excite suspicion, and things seemed to be going on smoothly enough. From the room which Gianni had hired Cencio watched the artist incessantly, all the while carefully maturing his plot. At last, one evening, when our sculptor was hard at work, Cencio broke into the studio, exclaiming excitedly, "For the love of God, permit me to remain here a little while! I am pursued by the police, who wish to arrest me. I assure you I am guilty of no crime, except that of being a liberal, and of having declared, in a moment of anger, that the overthrow of the Republic by the French was an assassination." So saying, Cencio made as though to conceal himself behind some statuary.