While Campana was going and coming, and giving dinners, and buying more statues, in blissful ignorance of the lowering storm, the Cardinal negotiated a loan at Rothschild's, made arrangements to cover the deficit, and instructed the Procuratore Fiscale to draw up an indictment for peculation.
The accusation fell like a thunderbolt upon the poor Marquis.

From his palace to his prison was but a step.

As he entered there, he rubbed his eyes, and asked himself, ingenuously enough, whether this move was not all a horrible dream.

He would have laughed at any one who had told him he was seriously in danger.

He charged with peculation! Out upon it! Peculation meant the clandestine application by a public officer of public funds to his private profit: whereas he had taken nothing clandestinely, and was ruined root and branch.