"For a time all went well. The young man (whom my uncle had promoted
from the painting of public-house sign-boards) made his way to Rome,
saluted the statue of the Fisherman, climbed on his knees up the
Scala Sancta, laid out the prescribed sum on relics, beads,
scapulars, medals, and what-not, and, in short, fulfilled all the
articles of my uncle's vow. On the second evening, after an
exhausting tour of the churches, he sat down in a tavern, and
incautiously, upon an empty stomach, treated himself to a whole flask
of the white wine of Sicily. It produced a revulsion, in which he
remembered his Protestant upbringing; and the upshot was, a Switzer
found him, late that night, supine in the roadway beneath the Vatican
gardens, gazing up at the moon and damning the Pope. Behaviour so
little consonant with his letters of introduction naturally awoke
misgivings. He was taken to the cells, where he broke down, and with
crapulous tears confessed the imposture; which so incensed His
Holiness that my uncle only bought himself off excommunication by
payment of a crippling sum down, and an annual tribute of his own
weight (sixteen stone twelve) in candles of pure spermaceti.
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