"She is in Pianura, then?" Odo exclaimed.
"Since yesterday, your Highness. Three days since she was ordered by the
police to leave Milan within twenty-four hours, and she came at once to
Pianura, knowing that my wife and I would gladly receive her. But today
we learned that the Holy Office was advised of her presence here, and of
the reason of her banishment from Lombardy; and this fresh danger has
forced her to implore your Highness's protection."
Andreoni went on to explain that the publication of her father's book
was the immediate cause of Fulvia's persecution. The Origin of
Civilisation, which had been printed some months previously in
Amsterdam, had stirred Italy more profoundly than any book since
Beccaria's great work on Crime and Punishment. The author's historical
investigations were but a pretext for the development of his political
theories, which were set forth with singular daring and audacity, and
supported by all the arguments that his long study of the past
commanded. The temperate and judicial tone which he had succeeded in
preserving enhanced the effect of his arraignment of Church and state,
and while his immense erudition commended his work to the learned, its
directness of style gave it an immediate popularity with the general
reader. It was an age when every book or pamphlet bearing on the great
question of personal liberty was eagerly devoured by an insatiable
public; and a few weeks after Vivaldi's volume had been smuggled into
Italy it was the talk of every club and coffee-house from Calabria to
Piedmont.
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