ustrian Government did not hesitate to grant
their request; it did more, it gave them special privileges.

The effect of this arrangement would be to deprive Venice of a lucrative
trade, and to place it in the emperor's dominions. Consequently the
Viennese Court sent them to Trieste with a strong recommendation to the
governor, and they had been there for the past six months.

The Venetian Government, of course, wished to entice them back to Venice.
They had vainly induced their late abbot to make handsome offers to them,
and they then proceeded by indirect means, endeavoring to stir up
obstacles in their way, and to disgust them with Trieste.

The consul told me plainly that he had not touched the matter, thinking
success to be out of the question; and he predicted that if I attempted
it I should find myself in the dilemma of having to solve the insoluble.
I felt the force of the consul's remark when I reflected that I could not
rely on the governor's assistance, or even speak to him on the subject. I
saw that I must not let him suspect my design, for besides his duty to
his Government he was a devoted friend to the interests of Trieste, and
for this reason a great patron of the monks.

In spite of these obstacles my nostalgia made me make acquaintance with
these monks under pretence of inspecting their Armenian types, which they
were already casting. In a week or ten days I became quite intimate with
them. One day I said that they were bound in honour to return to the
obedience of their abbot, if only to annul his sentence of
excommunication.

The most obstinate of them told me that the abbot had behaved more like a
despot than a father, and had thus absolved them from their obedience.
"Besides," he said, "no rascally priest has any right to cut off good
Christians from communion with the Saviour, and we are sure that our
patriarch will give us absolution and send us some more monks."

I could make no objection to these arguments; however, I asked on another
occasion on what conditions they would return to Venice.

The most sensible of them said that in the first place the abbot must
withdraw the four hundred thousand ducats which he had entrusted to the
Marquis Serpos at four per cent.

This sum was the capital from which the income of the Convent of St.
Lazarus was derived. The abbot had no right whatever to dispose of it,
even with the consent of a majority among the monks. If the marquis
became bankrupt th