Page:Travels and adventures of Willm. Lithgow, in Europe, Asia, and Africa.pdf/4

4 saluting her with “Saint, saint, O ever-blessed saint!” This being Friday, the woman having travelled all night, to save the expense of fish, had privately eaten a bit of her own cold meat, and drank half a buckale of red wine in a tavern. At last said our author, “Brother Arthur, I will go and open that mother’s bosom.” He did so, and raised up her head, a flood or vingarba, of sour wine, sprung down the alabaster stairs, mixed with lumps of indigested meat; at which the people being amazed from the saint swore she was devil; and, had not our travellers carried her in haste from the church to the tavern, they would doubtless have stoned her to death. Embarking in a frigate at Ancona, Arthur and Lithgow in three days arrived at venice, where as soon as they landed at St. Mark’s Place, perceived a great crowd of people, and in the midst of them a great smoke, inquiring the cause, they were told, that a grey-friar of the Franciscan order was burning alive at St. Mark’s Pillar, for debauching fifteen noble nuns, and all within a year. Pressing forward, they came to the Pillar, just as half his body and his right hand fell into the fire. This friar was forty-six years old, and had been confessor of that nunnery of