“This venerable old man had, as you may recollect, been denounced, by the Circulo del Populo, as an obscurantist, an enemy to the republic, and an adherent to the Pontifical authority. It was intended to include him in the number of priests and religious massacred at San Callisto. My husband had formed an acquaintance with him, and, having learned his danger, smuggled him into our house, where it was presumed nobody would think of looking for a proscribed priest.” “I remember him; I did not at all like him, and, had I cared much about him, would have betrayed him to the Club; for I had the wish of Voltaire in my heart, that ‘the last king might be strangled with the guts of the last priest.’ But, as he seemed old and harmless, and generally kept out of my way, I let him pass.” “He was a quiet, inoffensive man, and I own I was not sorry that he should escape the cruel death to which philanthropists and sworn friends of liberty doomed so many of his brethren. I was not cruel by nature, and my soul recoiled from the part I was often compelled to take. I thought it was hardly consistent for us, who advocated unbounded freedom of thought and action, to send the dagger to the heart, or coolly sever the carotid artery in the neck of those who chose to think and act differently from us; but I was held then by a force I could not resist.” “You mean, Priscilla, now to reproach me.” “No, my friend, no; I reproach only myself. Had I not originally consented, no power could have held me in that terrible thraldom. The agents you employed have no such power over us against our will; though, when we have once assented to their dominion, it is not always in our own power alone to reassert our liberty. My husband grew very fond of the venerable old man, and they spent hours, and even days, together. What was the subject of their conversation, I knew not, and did not inquire. “You returned to Paris, to prevent, if possible, the French from interfering to suppress the Roman Republic, by organizing a new insurrection of the Subterraneans, and by reminding the Prince-President of his previous republican and socialistic professions, and making it evident to him that the reëstablishment of the Pope would be fatal to the supremacy of the state, whether republican or imperial. During your absence you left me tranquil, and I began, for the first time since my marriage, to enjoy the sweets and tranquillity of domestic life. The good Franciscan would sometimes spend an evening with me and my husband. He was of a childlike simplicity, and of most winning manners, but a man of a cultivated mind, extensive information, and various and profound erudition. He discoursed much on the old Roman Republic and Empire, on the grasping ambition and tyranny of the government, the hollowness of the Roman virtues and the old Roman people, the cruel and impure nature of their religion, and the looseness and profligacy of their manners.