"Well, we shall see."

"Yes."

About a week later I heard a great noise in the street, and on putting my
head out of the window I saw a woman stripped to the waist, and mounted
on an ass, being scourged by the hangman, and hooted by a mob of all the
biricchini in Bologna. Severini came up at the same moment and informed
me that the woman was the chief midwife in Bologna, and that her
punishment had been ordered by the cardinal archbishop.

"It must be for some great crime," I observed.

"No doubt. It is the woman who was with Nina the day before yesterday."

"What! has Nina been brought to bed?"

"Yes; but of a still-born child."

"I see it all."

Next day the story was all over the town.

A poor woman had come before the archbishop, and had complained bitterly
that the midwife Teresa had seduced her, promising to give her twenty
sequins if she would give her a fine boy to whom she had given birth a
fortnight ago. She was not given the sum agreed upon, and in her despair
at hearing of the death of her child she begged for justice, declaring
herself able to prove that the dead child said to be Nina's was in
reality her own.