Page:Travels and adventures of Wm. Lithgow (1).pdf/5

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the expense of fish, had privately eaten a bit of 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 mothers 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 ehureh 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 Plaee, pereeived a great erowd 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 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 confessor of that nunnery of Sancia 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