No, his fears were not caused by the arms or armies, or the forces of any power, be it what it might.

No, it was not the loss of temporal dominion, which created in his heart the bitterest of afflictions.

Those who have caused this loss must, alas! bear the censure of the Church, and must henceforth be given over to the wrath of God, as long as they refuse to repent, and cast themselves on His loving mercy.

What afflicted and terrified him far more than all this, was the perversion of all ideas, this fearful evil, the corrupting of all notions; vice, in truth, is taken for virtue, virtue counted for vice.

At last, in some cities of this unhappy Italy, men have come to make in truth an apotheosis of the cut-throat and the assassin.