him, in an awful voice, to do the like. He obeyed, looking at me in a
dazed way. When I heard the first slight noise I examined, "Lo! the angel
cometh!" and fell down on my face, and with a hearty fisticuff forced him
into the same position. The noise of breaking was plainly heard, and for
a quarter of an hour I kept in that troublesome position, and if the
circumstances had been different I should have laughed to see how
motionless the creature was; but I restrained myself, remembering my
design of completely turning the fellow's head, or at least of obsessing
him for a time. As soon as I got up I knelt and allowed him to imitate
me, and I spent three hours in saying the rosary to him. From time to
time he dozed off, wearied rather by his position than by the monotony of
the prayer, but during the whole time he never interrupted me. Now and
again he dared to raise a furtive glance towards the ceiling. With a sort
of stupor on his face, he turned his head in the direction of the Virgin,
and the whole of his behaviour was for me the highest comedy. When I
heard the clock strike the hour for the work to cease, I said to him,

"Prostrate thyself, for the angel departeth."

Balbi returned to his cell, and we heard him no more. As I rose to my
feet, fixing my gaze on the wretched fellow, I read fright on every
feature, and was delighted. I addressed a few words to him that I might
see in what state of mind he was. He shed tears in abundance, and what he
said was mostly extravagant, his ideas having no sequence or connection.
He spoke of his sins, of his acts of devotion, of his zeal in the service
of St. Mark, and of the work he had done for the Commonwealth, and to
this attributed the special favours Mary had shewn him. I had to put up
with a long story about the miracles of the Rosary which his wife, whose
confessor was a young Dominican, had told him. He said that he did not
know what use I could make of an ignorant fellow like him.