d thus, exploring with her eyes the
surface of her dungeon. It was dry and strewn with bones. In one corner
lay a round black object which bore the aspect of a human skull. As it
eventually turned out, this was the head of Caterina, whom Benedetta
herself had helped to murder, and which Osio had thrown there. On
Sunday, during Mass, the men of the village of Velate were in church,
when they heard a voice from outside calling out, 'Help, help! I am at
the bottom of this well!' The well, as it happened, was distant some
dozen paces from the church door, and Benedetta had timed her call for
assistance at a lucky moment. The villagers ran to the spot, and drew
her out by means of a man who went down with a rope. She was then taken
to the house of a gentleman, Signor Alberico degli Alberici, who, when
no one else was charitable enough to receive her, opened his doors to
the exhausted victim of that murderous outrage. It may be remarked that
the same surgeon who had been employed to report on Ottavia's wounds,
now appeared to examine Benedetta. His name was Ambrogio Vimercati.
Benedetta was taken to the convent of S. Orsola, where her friend
Ottavia lay dying; and after making a full confession, she eventually
recovered her health, and suffered life-long incarceration in her old
convent.

Osio was still at large. On December 20, he addressed a long letter to
the Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, in which he vainly attempted to defend
himself, and throw the blame on his associates. It is a loathsome
document, blending fulsome protestations and fawning phrases, with
brutal denouncements of his victims, and treacherous insinuations. One
passage deserves notice. 'Who was it,' he says, 'who suggested my
correspondence with Virginia? The priest Paolo Arrigone, that ruin of
the monastery! The Canon Pisnato, who is now confessor to the nuns of
Meda; in his house you will find what will never be discovered in mine,
presents from nuns, incitements to amours, and other such things. The
priest Giacomo Bertola, confessor of the nuns of S. Margherita; who was
his devotee? Sacha!--and he stayed there all the day through. These men,
being priests, are not prosecuted; they are protected by their cloth,
forsooth! It is only of poor Osio that folk talk. Only he is persecuted,
only he is a malefactor, only he is the traitor!' Arrigone, as a matter
of fact, was tried, and condemned to two years' labor at the galleys,
after the expiration of which term