Page:Travels and adventures of Wm. Lithgow (3).pdf/5

5 the expense of fish, had privately eaten a bit her own eold 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 raising up her head, a flood or VINGARBA, of sour wine, sprung down the alabaster stairs, mixed with lumps of indigested meat; at whieh the people being amazed from the saint swore she was a devil; and, had not our travellers earried her in haste from the chureh 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 Veniee, where as soon as they landed at St. Mark’s Place, pereeived a great erowd of people, and in the midst of them a great smoke, inquiring the eause, they were told, that a grey-friar of the Francisean order was burning alive at St. Mark’s Pillar, for debauehing fifteen noble nuns, and all within a year. Pressing forward, they eame 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 eonfessor of that nunnery of Saneta Lucia five years. Most of these nuns were Senitors’ daughters.—Fifteen (all pregnant) were sent home to their father’s palaces; the lady prioress and the rest were banished for ever; the nunnery was razed to the ground; the