'Well, all I know is,' answered the Devil with some heat, 'that in
this matter as in most others, thank the Lord, I have on my side all
the historians and all the scientists, all the universities, all
the...'
'And I,' interrupted St Charles, waving his hand like a gentleman (he
is a Borromeo), 'I have the Pope!'
At this the Devil gave a great howl, and disappeared in a clap of
thunder, and was never seen again till his recent appearance at
Brighton.
So the Learned Man was saved; but hardly; for he had to spend five
hundred years in Purgatory catechizing such heretics and pagans as got
there, and instructing them in the true faith. And with the more
muscular he passed a knotty time.
You do not see the river Po till you are close to it. Then, a little
crook in the road being passed, you come between high trees, and
straight out before you, level with you, runs the road into and over a
very wide mass of tumbling water. It does not look like a bridge, it
looks like a quay. It does not rise; it has all the appearance of
being a strip of road shaved off and floated on the water.
All this is because it passes over boats, as do some bridges over the
Rhine.
