to as great an extent as
before. Lebat informs us that she had so great a sympathy for poor
wives who hated their husbands and wanted to get rid of them, but could
not afford to buy her wonderful aqua, that she made them presents of it.

She was not allowed, however, to play at this game for ever; she was at
length discovered in a nunnery, and her retreat cut off. The Viceroy
made several representations to the superior to deliver her up, but
without effect. The abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese,
constantly refused. The public curiosity was in consequence so much
excited at the additional importance thus thrust upon the criminal,
that thousands of persons visited the nunnery in order to catch a
glimpse of her.

The patience of the Viceroy appears to have been exhausted by these
delays. Being a man of sense, and not a very zealous Catholic, he
determined that even the Church should not shield a criminal so
atrocious. Setting the privileges of the nunnery at defiance, he sent a
troop of soldiers, who broke over the walls and carried her away vi et
armis. The Archbishop, Cardinal Pignatelli, was highly indignant, and
threatened to excommunicate and lay the whole city under interdict. All
the inferior clergy, animated by the esprit du corps, took up the
question, and so worked upon the superstitious and bigoted people, that
they were ready to rise in a mass to storm the palace of the Viceroy
and rescue the prisoner.

These were serious difficulties; but the Viceroy was not a man to be
daunted. Indeed, he seems to have acted throughout with a rare union of
astuteness, coolness, and energy. To avoid the evil consequences of the
threatened excommunication, he placed a guard round the palace of the
Archbishop, judging that the latter would not be so foolish as to
launch out an anathema which would cause the city to be starved, and
himself in it. The marketpeople would not have dared to come to the
city with provisions, so long as it remained under the ban. There would
have been too much inconvenience to himself and his ghostly brethren in
such a measure; and, as the Viceroy anticipated, the good Cardinal
reserved his thunders for some other occasion.

Still there was the populace. To quiet their clamour and avert the
impending insurrection, the agents of the government adroitly mingled
with the people, and spread abroad a report that Tophania had poisoned
all the wells and fountains of the city. This was e