The holy man asked him:

"What other is it you speak of?"

And the Adversary answered:

"If you knew of whom I speak, you would know who I am. And my wisest
words you would be loath to listen to, for much ill has been said of
me. But, if you remain ignorant who I am, I can be of much use to you. I
will teach you how intensely sensitive men are to the sounds that the
lips utter, and how they let themselves be killed for the sake of words
that are devoid of meaning. This we see with the Martyrs,--and in your
own case, Giovanni, who look forward with joy to be strangled and then
burned to the singing of the Seven Psalms, in the Great Square of
Viterbo, for this word _Truth_, for which you could not by any
possibility discover a reasonable interpretation.

"Verily you might ransack every hole and corner of your dim brain, and
pick over all the spiders' webs and old iron that cumber your head,
without ever lighting on a picklock to open this word and extract the
meaning. But for me, my poor friend, you would get yourself hanged and
your body burned for a word of one syllable which neither you nor your
judges know the sense of, so that none could ever have discovered which
to despise the most, hangmen or hanged.

"Know then that Truth, your well-beloved mistress, is made up of
elements compacted of wet and dry, hard and soft, cold and hot, and that
it is with this lady as with women of common humanity, in whom soft
flesh and warm blood are not diffused equally in all the body."