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'Ah, well, father, said I, 'I need some one on whom I can rely, some one towards whom I can feel kindly; I will therefore place confidence in your words." After some further conversation, Ciocci was asked if he wished to leave that place. "If I desire it!" he replied, "what a strange question! You might as well ask a condemned soul whether he desires to escape from hell!"
You knew not that your son, in anguish and despair, was clashing his chains, and devouring his tears in secret; that a triple bandage was placed before his eyes, and that he was being dragged, an unwilling victim, to the sacrifice." Returning home soon after, Ciocci rushed to his mother, and asked if she had his letters. They, were produced; when he found that only one had been written by him.
Ciocci, compelled at an early age to enter the Catholic College forced, notwithstanding his deep disgust and earnest remonstrance, to become a monk imprisoned deceived the victim of priestly artifice and fraud, at length becomes a Christian. He is of course thrown into a deeper dungeon; and more exquisite anguish inflicted upon him that he may be constrained to return to the Romish faith.
Ciocci saw that remonstrance was useless, but he reminded his jailer that he had been sent there for three days, to receive instruction, not to be treated as a criminal. "For three days," he resumed, counterfeiting my tone of voice, "for three days! That would be nothing. The dainty youth will not forsooth, be roughly treated; it remains to be seen whether he desires to be courteously entertained.
Another proof of the persecuting spirit of Rome is furnished by the "Narrative of Raffaele Ciocci, formerly a Benedictine Monk, but who now 'comes forth from Inquisitorial search and torture, and tells us what he has seen, heard and felt." We can make but a few extracts from this interesting little volume, published by the American and Foreign Christian Union, who, to use their own language "send it forth as a voice of instruction and warning to the American people.
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