"And when you left you took with you the moneys
that had been collected?"
"I did not," I answered. "I gave the matter no thought. When I left I
took nothing with me--not so much as the habit I had worn in that
hermitage."
There was a pause. Then he spoke slowly. "Such is not the evidence before
the Holy Office."
"What evidence?" I cried, breaking in upon his speech. "Where is my
accuser? Set me face to face with him."
Slowly he shook his huge head with its absurd fringe of greasy locks about
the tonsured scalp--that symbol of the Crown of Thorns.
"You must surely know that such is not the way of the Holy Office. In its
wisdom this tribunal holds that to produce delators would be to subject
them perhaps to molestation, and thus dry up the springs of knowledge and
information which it now enjoys. So that your request is idle as idle as
is the attempt at defence that you have made, the falsehoods with which you
have sought to clog the wheels of justice."
"Falsehood, sir monk?" quoth I, so fiercely that one of my attendants set a
restraining hand upon my arm.
The beady eyes vanished and reappeared, and they considered me impassively.
"Your sin, Agostino d'Anguissola," said he in his booming, level voice, "is
the most hideous that the wickedness of man could conceive or diabolical
greed put into execution.
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