isdiction of the Holy Office--a kind of
wild beast, with which it is not good to quarrel. Nevertheless, as there
would be some difficulty in shutting me up in the ecclesiastical prisons
of the Holy Office, it was determined to carry my case before the State
Inquisitors, who took upon themselves the provisional duty of putting a
watch upon my manner of living.

M. Antony Condulmer, who as a friend of Abbe Chiari's was an enemy of
mine, was then an Inquisitor of State, and he took the opportunity of
looking upon me in the light of a disturber of the peace of the
commonwealth. A secretary of an embassy, whom I knew some years after,
told me that a paid informer, with two other witnesses, also, doubtless,
in the pay of this grand tribunal, had declared that I was guilty of only
believing in the devil, as if this absurd belief, if it were possible,
did not necessarily connote a belief in God! These three honest fellows
testified with an oath that when I lost money at play, on which occasion
all the faithful are wont to blaspheme, I was never heard to curse the
devil. I was further accused of eating meat all the year round, of only
going to hear fine masses, and I was vehemently suspected of being a
Freemason. It was added that I frequented the society of foreign
ministers, and that living as I did with three noblemen, it was certain
that I revealed, for the large sums which I was seen to lose, as many
state secrets as I could worm out of them.

All these accusations, none of which had any foundation in fact, served
the Tribunal as a pretext to treat me as an enemy of the commonwealth and
as a prime conspirator. For several weeks I was counselled by persons
whom I might have trusted to go abroad whilst the Tribunal was engaged on
my case. This should have been enough, for the only people who can live
in peace at Venice are those whose existence the Tribunal is ignorant of,
but I obstinately despised all these hints. If I had listened to the
indirect advice which was given me, I should have become anxious, and I
was the sworn foe of all anxiety. I kept saying to myself, "I feel
remorse for nothing and I am therefore guilty of nothing, and the
innocent have nothing to fear." I was a fool, for I argued as if I had
been a free man in a free country. I must also confess that what to a
great extent kept me from thinking of possible misfortune was the actual
misfortune which oppressed me from morning to night. I lost every day, I
o