n helping Osio. Not only the confessor, who
was a man of infamous character, but her friends among the nuns,
themselves accustomed to intrigue of a like nature, led her down the
path to ruin. False keys were made, and one or other of the faithless
sisters introduced the young man into the convent at night. When
Virginia resisted, and enlarged upon the sacrilege of breaking cloister,
Arrigone supplied her with a printed book of casuistry, in which it was
written that though it might be sinful for a nun to leave her convent,
there was no sin in a man entering it. At last she fell; and for seven
years she lived in close intimacy with her lover, passing the nights
with him, either in his own house or in one of the cells of S.
Margherita. On one occasion, when he had to fly from justice, the girls
concealed him in their rooms for fifteen days. The first fruit of this
amour was a stillborn child; after giving birth to which, Virginia sold
all the silver she possessed, and sent a votive tablet to Our Lady of
Loreto, on which she had portrayed a nun and baby, kneeling and weeping.
'Twice again I sent the same memorial to our Lady, imploring the grace
of liberation from this passion. But the sorceries with which I was
surrounded, prevailed. In my bed were found the bones of the dead, hooks
of iron, and many other things, of which the nuns were well informed.
Nay, I would fain have given up my life to save my soul; and so great
were my afflictions, that in despair I went to throw myself into the
well, but was restrained by the image of the Virgin at the bottom of the
garden, for which I had a special devotion.' In course of time she gave
birth to a little girl, named Francesca, who frequented the convent,
and whom Osio legitimated as his child.

It was impossible that a connection of long standing, known to several
accomplices, and corroborated by the presence of the child Francesca,
should remain hidden from the world. People began to speak about the
fact in Monza. A druggist, named Reinaro Soncini, gossiped somewhat too
openly. Osio had him shot one night by a servant in his pay.

And now the lovers were engaged in a career of crime, which brought them
finally to justice. Virginia's waiting-woman Caterina fell into disgrace
with her mistress, and was shut up in a kind of prison by her orders.
The girl declared that she would bring the whole bad affair before the
superior authorities, and would do so immediately, seeing that Mon