reproach which soon sent his visitor away, perfectly convinced that the
spirit they had undertaken to break had not yet begun to bend.

Five more weary days, and then began the examination,--cautious, minute,
perplexing: questions framed to entangle; charges advanced, not for
discussion, but for conviction; a review of the whole course and tenor
of his past life; his stories and verses; his jests among friends;
sayings that he had forgotten; things that he had done years before,
mixed up with things that he had never done; all adroitly commingled,
and so skilfully arranged, that, while each seemed comparatively
unimportant in itself, each had its place prepared for it with malignant
craft and wondrous subtlety; and all taken together forming a network of
harmonious evidence from which there seemed no possibility of escape.
Familiar as he was with the history of the Holy Office, and aware as he
had always been that his steps, like those of every man upon whom
suspicion had ever fallen, were dogged by spies, he had never supposed
that his daily life had been tracked with such persistence, and so
carefully treasured up against him.

He saw his danger, and saw, too, that the course he had resolved upon in
the first hour of his arrest was the only course that could save him.
Denial would be useless. They expected it and were well prepared for it.
But it remained to be seen whether they were equally well prepared for
frank confession and adroit interpretation. To every question with
regard to acts or words he answered, "Yes, I did so,--I said
so,--but"--and then, by putting an unexpected interpretation upon it, he
either stripped it of its offensive bearing, or reduced it to an idle
jest of which nothing worse could be said than that it was indiscreet.

The fathers were puzzled. For denial they had proofs. Prevarication they