It was very clear to everybody present that the judges would
pronounce Paolina to be guilty of the crime they were investigating;
and to everybody present, with one or two exceptions, this was a
very agreeable and satisfactory winding-up of the unhappy affair.
Ravenna would be able to wash her hands of the matter. It was
wholly, both in conception and execution, the work of a stranger.
Since so great a misfortune had happened, it could not be more
satisfactorily accounted for.
It is probable enough, therefore, that any Tom, Jack, or Harry, who,
at that conjuncture, had presented himself at the prefettura for the
avowed purpose of bringing a new light to the solution of the
mystery which had been already so satisfactorily solved, might have
experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining for himself any
access to, or hearing from, the judges.
But the person who had now thus presented himself at the prefettura
of Ravenna belonged to a body, the very lowest and poorest members
of which, in that country, can always find, somehow or other, some
means of compassing almost any object which is not disapproved by
some superior member of their own corporation. The new-comer was a
friar--old Father Fabiano, the priest of St. Apollinare, as the
reader may have conjectured.
The police agents had been anxious to produce him there, as the
reader knows, and he had baffled their wishes.
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