spontaneously in too
great abundance, and for which there is no market. I felt compelled to
admit the justice of the Romans who had called them Brutes instead of
Byutians. The good priests with whom I had been travelling laughed at my
dread of the tarantula and of the crasydra, for the disease brought on by
the bite of those insects appeared to me more fearful even than a certain
disease with which I was already too well acquainted. They assured me
that all the stories relating to those creatures were fables; they
laughed at the lines which Virgil has devoted to them in the Georgics as
well as at all those I quoted to justify my fears.

I found Bishop Bernard de Bernardis occupying a hard chair near an old
table on which he was writing. I fell on my knees, as it is customary to
do before a prelate, but, instead of giving me his blessing, he raised me
up from the floor, and, folding me in his arms, embraced me tenderly. He
expressed his deep sorrow when I told him that in Naples I had not been
able to find any instructions to enable me to join him, but his face
lighted up again when I added that I was indebted to no one for money,
and that I was in good health. He bade me take a seat, and with a heavy
sigh he began to talk of his poverty, and ordered a servant to lay the
cloth for three persons. Besides this servant, his lordship's suite
consisted of a most devout-looking housekeeper, and of a priest whom I
judged to be very ignorant from the few words he uttered during our meal.
The house inhabited by his lordship was large, but badly built and poorly
kept. The furniture was so miserable that, in order to make up a bed for
me in the room adjoining his chamber, the poor bishop had to give up one
of his two mattresses! His dinner, not to say any more about it,
frightened me, for he was very strict in keeping the rules of his order,
and this being a fast day, he did not eat any meat, and the oil was very
bad. Nevertheless, monsignor was an intelligent man, and, what is still
better, an honest man. He told me, much to my surprise, that his
bishopric, although not one of little importance, brought him in only
five hundred ducat-diregno yearly, and that, unfortunately, he had
contracted debts to the amount of six hundred. He added, with a sigh,
that his only happiness was to feel himself out of the clutches of the
monks, who had persecuted him, and made his life a perfect purgatory for
fifteen years. All these confidences caus