wife died in giving birth to you. Then,
since he could not settle down in the place where his dearest lay
buried, he came hither to Venice, and brought me, your nurse, with him
to take care of you. That terrible night an awful fate overtook your
father, and also threatened you. I succeeded in saving you. A noble
Venetian adopted you; I, deprived of all means of support, had to
remain in Venice.

"My father, a barber-surgeon, of whom it was said that he practised
forbidden science as well, had made me familiar from my earliest
childhood with the mysterious virtues of Nature's remedies. By him I
was taught to wander through the fields and woods, learning the
properties of many healing herbs, of many insignificant mosses, the
hours when they should be plucked and gathered, and how to mix the
juices of the various simples. But to this knowledge there was added a
very special gift, which Heaven has endowed me with for some
inscrutable purpose. I often see future events as if in a dim and
distant mirror; and almost without any conscious effort of will, I
declare in expressions which are unintelligible to myself what I have
seen; for some unknown Power compels me, and I cannot resist it. Now
when I had to stay behind in Venice, deserted of all the world, I
resolved to earn a livelihood by means of my tried skill. In a brief
time I cured the most dangerous diseases. And furthermore, as my
presence alone had a beneficial effect upon my patients, and the soft
stroking of my hand often brought them past the crisis in a few
minutes, my fame necessarily soon spread through the town, and money
came pouring in in streams. This awakened the jealousy of the
physicians, quacks who sold their pills and essences in St. Mark's
Square, on the Rialto, and in the Mint, poisoning their patients
instead of curing them. They spread abroad that I was in league with
the devil himself; and they were believed by the superstitious folk. I
was soon arrested and brought before the ecclesiastical tribunal. O my
Tonino, what horrid tortures did they inflict upon me in order to force
from me a confession of the most damnable of all alliances! I remained
firm. My hair turned white; my body withered up to a mummy; my feet and
hands were paralysed. But there was still the terrible rack left--the
cunningest invention of the foul fiend,--and it extorted from me a
confession at which I shudder even now. I was to be burnt alive; but
when the earthquake shook th