beg

23:21 Jan 28, 2015 

See my answer.

23:13 Jan 28, 2015 

Demonstrating that translation errors have a long and occasionally distinguished history. My own guess is that it was something along the lines of "I beg your indulgence, as your humble servant ... ". Gallagy has noted that this was translated from the Italian, so the only way of knowing is to read that original text..

22:11 Jan 28, 2015 

Ah yes, why didn't I spot that?

I think you have to recognize that here you have an archaic text, in a translation that is itself (apparently) archaic, and between the possibility of an actual mistake in translation, and the simple fact that modern usage has evolved since this time, you have quite a dilemma on your hands!

Normally, in modern EN, 'to beg' would require some kind of follow up: "I beg you to do something..." or "I beg your permission to do something..." etc.

But I suspect here we are dealing with an archaic usage where that was not the case.

22:04 Jan 28, 2015 

It is the very first sentence on the page 3.

21:56 Jan 28, 2015 

As the text in the article you cite is not searchable, it would be ever so helpful if you could please help us to locate it, in terms of page and perhaps paragraph number?

On the face of it, Polangmar's suggestion of missing text seem the only way to make it make sense (in modern EN) — however, we do need to place it in its wider context to see if any other solution is possible.