His mouth was loose-
lipped and gluttonous and cruel.
When he spoke, the deep rumbling quality of his voice was increased by the
echoes of that vaulted place.
"What is your name?" he said.
I am Agostino d'Anguissola, Lord of Mondolfo and..."
"Pass over your titles," he boomed. "The Holy Office takes no account of
worldly rank. What is your age?"
"I am in my twenty-first year."
"Benedicamus Dominum," he commented, though I could not grasp the
appositeness of the comment. "You stand accused, Agostino d'Anguissola, of
sacrilege and of defiling holy things. What have you to say? Do you
confess your guilt?"
"I am so far from confessing it," I answered, "that I have yet to learn
what is the nature of the sacrilege with which I am charged. I am
conscious of no such sin. Far from it, indeed..."
"You shall be informed," he interrupted, imposing silence upon me by a wave
of his fat hand; and heaving his vast bulk sideways--"Read him the
indictment," he bade one of the amanuenses.
From the depths of a vizored cowl came a thin, shrill voice:
"The Holy Office has knowledge that Agostino d'Anguissola did for a space
of some six months, during the winter of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1544,
and the spring of the year of Our Blessed Lord 1545, pursue a fraudulent
and sacrilegious traffic, adulterating, for moneys which he extorted from
the poor and the faithful, things which are holy, and adapting them to his
own base purposes.
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