Excerpt from Dealings With the Inquisition: Or Papal Rome, Her Priests, and Her Jesuits; With Important Disclosures It was in the month of July, 1842, that I was released, by order of Pope Gregory, from my first imprisonment in the dungeons of the Inquisition. On this occasion, one of the Dominican monks who serve the office of inquisitor inquired of me, with a malicious look, whether I, also, intended, one day, to write an account of the Inquisition, as a well-known author had done before me, with respect to Spielberg, in his celebrated work, "Le mie 'prigioni." Perceiving at once the object of this deceitful interrogation, which was only to afford a pretext for renewing my incarceration at the very moment when liberty was before me, I smiled at my interlocutor, and exclaimed, "How is it possible, Padre Inquisitore, you can imagine I can have any idea of vindicating myself on account of the imprisonment I have undergone? No, be assured, whatever injustice you may have committed toward me, I shall attempt no vindication. You know full well that in this country there exists no tribunal higher than your own: even that of conscience is silent here, and prostrate before you. Should I make my complaint elsewhere, and appeal to the justice of another land, how could I hope, unknown and unfriended as I am, that my story would be listened to? Distrust is natural to man. One only tribunal remains; from that neither you nor I can escape; and it is to that same tribunal that I shall be able to summon the pope and his cardinals. Nay, setting aside the idea of my own appeal, they will be summoned to appear by the great Judge himself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.