Though I am, I confess, but a young man, and not very ripe in experience of affairs, yet it has pleased my Most Serene and Gracious Master to send me, as one much devoted to your Royal Highnesses and ardently attached to all bearing the Italian name, on what is really a great mission.--The ancient legend is that the son of Croesus was completely dumb from his birth. When, however, he saw a soldier aiming a wound at his father, straightway he had the use of his tongue. No other is my predicament, feeling as I do my tongue loosened by those very recent and bloody wounds of Mother Church. A great mission surely that is to be called wherein all the safety and hope of many poor people is comprehended--their sole hope lying in the chance that they shall be able, by all their loyalty, obedience, and most humble prayers, to mollify and appease the minds of your Royal Highnesses, now irritated against them. In behalf of these poor people, whose cause pity itself may seem to make its own, the Most Serene Protector of England also comes as an intercessor, and most earnestly requests and beseeches your Royal Highnesses to deign to extend your mercy to these your very poor and most outcast subjects--those, I mean, who, inhabiting the roots of the Alps and certain valleys in your dominion, have professed nominally the Religion of the Protestants. For he has heard (what no one can say has been done by the will of your Royal Highnesses) that those wretched creatures have been partly killed by your forces, partly expelled by violence and driven from their home and country, so that they are now wandering, with their wives and children, houseless, roofless, poor, and destitute of all resource, through rugged and inhospitable spots and over snow-covered mountains. And, through the days of this transaction, if only the things are true that fame at present reports everywhere (would that Fame were proved a liar!), what was not dared and attempted against them? Houses smoking everywhere, torn limbs, the ground bloody! Ay, and virgins, ravished and hideously abused, breathed their last miserably; and old men and persons labouring under illness were committed to the flames; and some infants were dashed against the rocks, and the brains of others were cooked and eaten. Atrocity horrible and before unheard of, savagery such that, good God, were all the Neros of all times and ages to come to life again, what a shame they would feel at having contrived nothing equally inhuman! Verily, verily, Angels are horrorstruck, men are amazed; heaven itself seems to be astounded by these cries, and the earth itself to blush with the shed blood of so many innocent men. Do not, great God, do not seek the revenge due to this iniquity. May thy blood, Christ, wash away this stain!--But it is not for me to relate these things in order as they happened, or to dwell longer upon them; and what my Most