He laughed too loud as he spoke, alluded in too brutal a fashion to his

child, that living proof of his manhood. Was it suffering that made his

lips curve upwards and reveal his white teeth? It could be divined that

he was quivering, fighting against an awakening of covert, tumultuous

passion, which he would not acknowledge even to himself.

“And you, my dear Abbe?” he hastily resumed. “Do you know the other

report? Do you know that the Countess is coming here?” It was thus, by

force of habit, that he designated Benedetta, forgetting that she was no

longer his wife.

“Yes, I have just been told so,” Pierre replied; and then he hesitated

for a moment before adding, with a desire to prevent any disagreeable

surprise: “And we shall no doubt see Prince Dario also, for he has not

started for Naples as I told you. Something prevented his departure at

the last moment, I believe. At least so I gathered from a servant.”

Prada no longer laughed. His face suddenly became grave, and he contented

himself with murmuring: “Ah! so the cousin is to be of the party. Well,

we shall see them, we shall see them both!”

Then, whilst the two friends went on chatting, he became silent, as if

serious considerations impelled him to reflect. And suddenly making a

gesture of apology he withdrew yet farther into the embrasure in which he

stood, pulled a note-book out of his pocket, and tore from it a leaf on

which, without modifying his handwriting otherwise than by slightly

enlarging it, he pencilled these four lines: “A legend avers that the fig

tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and that its fruit is deadly for him

who may desire to become Pope. Eat not the poisoned figs, nor give them

either to your servants or your fowls.” Then he folded the paper,

fastened it with a postage stamp, and wrote on it the address: “To his

most Reverend and most Illustrious Eminence, Cardinal Boccanera.” And

when he had placed everything in his pocket again, he drew a long breath

and once more called back his laugh.

A kind of invincible discomfort, a far-away terror had momentarily frozen

him. Without being guided by any clear train of reasoning, he had felt

the need of protecting himself against any cowardly temptation, any

possible abomination. He could not have told what course of ideas had

induced him to write those four lines without a moment’s delay, on the

very spot where he stood, under penalty of contributing to a great

catastrophe. But one thought was firmly fixed in his brain, that on

leaving the ball he would go to the Via Giulia and throw that note into

the letter-box at the Palazzo Boccanera. And that decided, he was once

more easy in mind.

“Why, what is the matter with you, my dear Abbe?” he inquired on again

joining in the conversation of the two friends. “You are quite gloomy.”

And on Pierre telling him of the bad news which he had received, the

condemnation of his book, and the single day which remained to him for

action if he did not wish his journey to Rome to result in defeat, he

began to protest as if he himself needed agitation and diversion in order

to continue hopeful and bear the ills of life. “Never mind, never mind,

don’t worry yourself,” said he, “one loses all one’s strength by

worrying. A day is a great deal, one can do ever so many things in a day.

An hour, a minute suffices for Destiny to intervene and turn defeat into

victory!” He grew feverish as he spoke, and all at once added, “Come,

let’s go to the ball-room. It seems that the scene there is something

prodigious.”

Then he exchanged a last loving glance with Lisbeth whilst Pierre and

Narcisse followed him, the three of them extricating themselves from

their corner with the greatest difficulty, and then wending their way

towards the adjoining gallery through a sea of serried skirts, a billowy

expanse of necks and shoulders whence ascended the passion which makes

life, the odour alike of love and of death.

With its eight windows overlooking the Corso, their panes uncurtained and

throwing a blaze of light upon the houses across the road, the picture

gallery, sixty-five feet in length and more than thirty in breadth,

spread out with incomparable splendour. The illumination was dazzling.

Clusters of electric lamps had changed seven pairs of huge marble

candelabra into gigantic _torcheres_, akin to constellations; and all

along the cornice up above, other lamps set in bright-hued floral glasses

formed a marvellous garland of flaming flowers: tulips, paeonies, and

roses. The antique red velvet worked with gold, which draped the walls,

glowed like a furnace fire. About the doors and windows there were

hangings of old lace broidered with flowers in coloured silk whose hues

had the very intensity of life. But the sight of sights beneath the

sumptuous panelled ceiling adorned with golden roses, the unique

spectacle of a richness not to be equalled, was the collection of

masterpieces such as no museum could excel. There were works of Raffaelle

and Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens, Velasquez and Ribera, famous works

which in this unexpected illumination suddenly showed forth, triumphant

with youth regained, as if awakened to the immortal life of genius. And,

as their Majesties would not arrive before midnight, the ball had just

been opened, and flights of soft-hued gowns were whirling in a waltz past

all the pompous throng, the glittering jewels and decorations, the

gold-broidered uniforms and the pearl-broidered robes, whilst silk and

satin and velvet spread and overflowed upon every side.

“It is prodigious, really!” declared Prada with his excited air; “let us

go this way and place ourselves in a window recess again. There is no

better spot for getting a good view without being too much jostled.”

They lost Narcisse somehow or other, and on reaching the desired recess

found themselves but two, Pierre and the Count. The orchestra, installed

on a little platform at the far end of the gallery, had just finished the

waltz, and the dancers, with an air of giddy rapture, were slowly walking

through the crowd when a fresh arrival caused every head to turn. Donna

Serafina, arrayed in a robe of purple silk as if she had worn the colours

of her brother the Cardinal, was making a royal entry on the arm of

Consistorial-Advocate Morano. And never before had she laced herself so

tightly, never had her waist looked so slim and girlish; and never had

her stern, wrinkled face, which her white hair scarcely softened,

expressed such stubborn and victorious domination. A discreet murmur of

approval ran round, a murmur of public relief as it were, for all Roman

society had condemned the unworthy conduct of Morano in severing a

connection of thirty years to which the drawing-rooms had grown as

accustomed as if it had been a legal marriage. The rupture had lasted for

two months, to the great scandal of Rome where the cult of long and

faithful affections still abides. And so the reconciliation touched every

heart and was regarded as one of the happiest consequences of the victory

which the Boccaneras had that day gained in the affair of Benedetta’s

marriage. Morano repentant and Donna Serafina reappearing on his arm,

nothing could have been more satisfactory; love had conquered, decorum

was preserved and good order re-established.

But there was a deeper sensation as soon as Benedetta and Dario were seen

to enter, side by side, behind the others. This tranquil indifference for

the ordinary forms of propriety, on the very day when the marriage with

Prada had been annulled, this victory of love, confessed and celebrated

before one and all, seemed so charming in its audacity, so full of the

bravery of youth and hope, that the pair were at once forgiven amidst a

murmur of universal admiration. And as in the case of Celia and Attilio,

all hearts flew to them, to their radiant beauty, to the wondrous

happiness that made their faces so resplendent. Dario, still pale after

his long convalescence, somewhat slight and delicate of build, with the

fine clear eyes of a big child, and the dark curly beard of a young god,

bore himself with a light pride, in which all the old princely blood of

the Boccaneras could be traced. And Benedetta, she so white under her

casque of jetty hair, she so calm and so sensible, wore her lovely smile,

that smile so seldom seen on her face but which was irresistibly

fascinating, transfiguring her, imparting the charm of a flower to her

somewhat full mouth, and filling the infinite of her dark and fathomless

eyes with a radiance as of heaven. And in this gay return of youth and

happiness, an exquisite instinct had prompted her to put on a white gown,

a plain girlish gown which symbolised her maidenhood, which told that she

had remained through all a pure untarnished lily for the husband of her

choice. And nothing of her form was to be seen, not a glimpse of bosom or

shoulder. It was as if the impenetrable, redoubtable mystery of love, the

sovereign beauty of woman slumbered there, all powerful, but veiled with

white. Again, not a jewel appeared on her fingers or in her ears. There

was simply a necklace falling about her _corsage_, but a necklace fit for

royalty, the famous pearl necklace of the Boccaneras, which she had

inherited from her mother, and which was known to all Rome--pearls of

fabulous size cast negligently about her neck, and sufficing, simply as

she was gowned, to make her queen of all.

“Oh!” murmured Pierre in ecstasy, “how happy and how beautiful she is!”

But he at once regretted that he had expressed his thoughts aloud, for

beside him he heard a low plaint, an involuntary growl which reminded him

of the Count’s presence. However, Prada promptly stifled this cry of

returning anguish, and found strength enough to affect a brutish gaiety:

“The devil!” said he, “they have plenty of impudence. I hope we shall see

them married and bedded at once!” Then regretting this coarse jest which

had been prompted by the revolt of passion, he sought to appear

indifferent: “She looks very nice this evening,” he said; “she has the

finest shoulders in the world, you know, and its a real success for her

to hide them and yet appear more beautiful than ever.”

He went on speaking, contriving to assume an easy tone, and giving

various little particulars about the Countess as he still obstinately

called the young woman. However, he had drawn rather further into the

recess, for fear, no doubt, that people might remark his pallor, and the

painful twitch which contracted his mouth. He was in no state to fight,

to show himself gay and insolent in presence of the joy which the lovers

so openly and naively expressed. And he was glad of the respite which the

arrival of the King and Queen at this moment offered him. “Ah! here are

their Majesties!” he exclaimed, turning towards the window. “Look at the

scramble in the street!”

Although the windows were closed, a tumult could be heard rising from the

footways. And Pierre on looking down saw, by the light of the electric

lamps, a sea of human heads pour over the road and encompass the

carriages. He had several times already seen the King during the latter’s

daily drives to the grounds of the Villa Borghese, whither he came like

any private gentleman--unguarded, unescorted, with merely an aide-de-camp

accompanying him in his victoria. At other times he drove a light phaeton

with only a footman in black livery to attend him. And on one occasion

Pierre had seen him with the Queen, the pair of them seated side by side

like worthy middle-class folks driving abroad for pleasure. And, as the

royal couple went by, the busy people in the streets and the promenaders

in the public gardens contented themselves with wafting them an

affectionate wave of the hand, the most expansive simply approaching to

smile at them, and no one importuning them with acclamations. Pierre, who

harboured the traditional idea of kings closely guarded and passing

processionally with all the accompaniment of military pomp, was therefore

greatly surprised and touched by the amiable _bonhomie_ of this royal

pair, who went wherever they listed in full security amidst the smiling

affection of their people. Everybody, moreover, had told him of the

King’s kindliness and simplicity, his desire for peace, and his passion

for sport, solitude, and the open air, which, amidst the worries of

power, must often have made him dream of a life of freedom far from the

imperious duties of royalty for which he seemed unfitted.* But the Queen

was yet more tenderly loved. So naturally and serenely virtuous that she

alone remained ignorant of the scandals of Rome, she was also a woman of

great culture and great refinement, conversant with every field of

literature, and very happy in being so intelligent, so superior to those

around her--a pre-eminence which she realised and which she was fond of

showing, but in the most natural and most graceful of ways.

* King Humbert inherited these tastes from his father Victor

Emanuel, who was likewise a great sportsman and had a perfect

horror of court life, pageantry, and the exigencies of

politics.--Trans.

Like Pierre, Prada had remained with his face to the window, and suddenly

pointing to the crowd he said: “Now that they have seen the Queen they

will go to bed well pleased. And there isn’t a single police agent there,

I’m sure. Ah! to be loved, to be loved!” Plainly enough his distress of

spirit was coming back, and so, turning towards the gallery again, he

tried to play the jester. “Attention, my dear Abbe, we mustn’t miss their

Majesties’ entry. That will be the finest part of the _fete_!”

A few minutes went by, and then, in the very midst of a polka, the

orchestra suddenly ceased playing. But a moment afterwards, with all the

blare of its brass instruments, it struck up the Royal March. The dancers

fled in confusion, the centre of the gallery was cleared, and the King

and Queen entered, escorted by the Prince and Princess Buongiovanni, who

had received them at the foot of the staircase. The King was in ordinary

evening dress, while the Queen wore a robe of straw-coloured satin,

covered with superb white lace; and under the diadem of brilliants which

encircled her beautiful fair hair, she looked still young, with a fresh

and rounded face, whose expression was all amiability, gentleness, and

wit. The music was still sounding with the enthusiastic violence of

welcome. Behind her father and mother, Celia appeared amidst the press of

people who were following to see the sight; and then came Attilio, the

Saccos, and various relatives and official personages. And, pending the

termination of the Royal March, only salutations, glances, and smiles

were exchanged amidst the sonorous music and dazzling light; whilst all

the guests crowded around on tip-toe, with outstretched necks and

glittering eyes--a rising tide of heads and shoulders, flashing with the

fires of precious stones.

At last the march ended and the presentations began. Their Majesties were

already acquainted with Celia, and congratulated her with quite

affectionate kindliness. However, Sacco, both as minister and father, was

particularly desirous of presenting his son Attilio. He bent his supple

spine, and summoned to his lips the fine words which were appropriate, in

such wise that he contrived to make the young man bow to the King in the

capacity of a lieutenant in his Majesty’s army, whilst his homage as a

handsome young man, so passionately loved by his betrothed was reserved

for Queen Margherita. Again did their Majesties show themselves very

gracious, even towards the Signora Sacco who, ever modest and prudent,

had remained in the background. And then occurred an incident that was

destined to give rise to endless gossip. Catching sight of Benedetta,

whom Count Prada had presented to her after his marriage, the Queen, who

greatly admired her beauty and charm of manner, addressed her a smile in

such wise that the young woman was compelled to approach. A conversation

of some minutes’ duration ensued, and the Contessina was favoured with

some extremely amiable expressions which were perfectly audible to all

around. Most certainly the Queen was ignorant of the event of the day,

the dissolution of Benedetta’s marriage with Prada, and her coming union

with Dario so publicly announced at this _gala_, which now seemed to have

been given to celebrate a double betrothal. Nevertheless that

conversation caused a deep impression; the guests talked of nothing but

the compliments which Benedetta had received from the most virtuous and

intelligent of queens, and her triumph was increased by it all, she

became yet more beautiful and more victorious amidst the happiness she

felt at being at last able to bestow herself on the spouse of her choice,

that happiness which made her look so radiant.

But, on the other hand, the torture which Prada experienced now became

intense. Whilst the sovereigns continued conversing, the Queen with the

ladies who came to pay her their respects, the King with the officers,

diplomatists, and other important personages who approached him, Prada

saw none but Benedetta--Benedetta congratulated, caressed, exalted by

affection and glory. Dario was near her, flushing with pleasure, radiant

like herself. It was for them that this ball had been given, for them

that the lamps shone out, for them that the music played, for them that

the most beautiful women of Rome had bared their bosoms and adorned them

with precious stones. It was for them that their Majesties had entered to

the strains of the Royal March, for them that the _fete_ was becoming

like an apotheosis, for them that a fondly loved queen was smiling,

appearing at that betrothal _gala_ like the good fairy of the nursery

tales, whose coming betokens life-long happiness. And for Prada, this

wondrously brilliant hour when good fortune and joyfulness attained their

apogee, was one of defeat. It was fraught with the victory of that woman

who had refused to be his wife in aught but name, and of that man who now

was about to take her from him: such a public, ostentatious, insulting

victory that it struck him like a buffet in the face. And not merely did

his pride and passion bleed for that: he felt that the triumph of the

Saccos dealt a blow to his fortune. Was it true, then, that the rough

conquerors of the North were bound to deteriorate in the delightful

climate of Rome, was that the reason why he already experienced such a

sensation of weariness and exhaustion? That very morning at Frascati in

connection with that disastrous building enterprise he had realised that

his millions were menaced, albeit he refused to admit that things were

going badly with him, as some people rumoured. And now, that evening,

amidst that _fete_ he beheld the South victorious, Sacco winning the day

like one who feeds at his ease on the warm prey so gluttonously pounced

upon under the flaming sun.

And the thought of Sacco being a minister, an intimate of the King,

allying himself by marriage to one of the noblest families of the Roman

aristocracy, and already laying hands on the people and the national

funds with the prospect of some day becoming the master of Rome and

Italy--that thought again was a blow for the vanity of this man of prey,

for the ever voracious appetite of this enjoyer, who felt as if he were

being pushed away from table before the feast was over! All crumbled and

escaped him, Sacco stole his millions, and Benedetta tortured his flesh,

stirring up that awful wound of unsatisfied passion which never would be

healed.

Again did Pierre hear that dull plaint, that involuntary despairing

growl, which had upset him once before. And he looked at the Count, and

asked him: “Are you suffering?” But on seeing how livid was the face of

Prada, who only retained his calmness by a superhuman effort, he

regretted his indiscreet question, which, moreover, remained unanswered.

And then to put the other more at ease, the young priest went on

speaking, venting the thoughts which the sight before him inspired: “Your

father was right,” said he, “we Frenchmen whose education is so full of

the Catholic spirit, even in these days of universal doubt, we never

think of Rome otherwise than as the old Rome of the popes. We scarcely

know, we can scarcely understand the great changes which, year by year,

have brought about the Italian Rome of the present day. Why, when I

arrived here, the King and his government and the young nation working to

make a great capital for itself, seemed to me of no account whatever!

Yes, I dismissed all that, thought nothing of it, in my dream of

resuscitating a Christian and evangelical Rome, which should assure the

happiness of the world.”

He laughed as he spoke, pitying his own artlessness, and then pointed

towards the gallery where Prince Buongiovanni was bowing to the King

whilst the Princess listened to the gallant remarks of Sacco: a scene

full of symbolism, the old papal aristocracy struck down, the _parvenus_

accepted, the black and white worlds so mixed together that one and all

were little else than subjects, on the eve of forming but one united

nation. That conciliation between the Quirinal and the Vatican which in

principle was regarded as impossible, was it not in practice fatal, in

face of the evolution which went on day by day? People must go on living,

loving, and creating life throughout the ages. And the marriage of

Attilio and Celia would be the symbol of the needful union: youth and

love triumphing over ancient hatred, all quarrels forgotten as a handsome

lad goes by, wins a lovely girl, and carries her off in his arms in order

that the world may last.

“Look at them!” resumed Pierre, “how handsome and young and gay both the

_fiances_ are, all confidence in the future. Ah! I well understand that

your King should have come here to please his minister and win one of the

old Roman families over to his throne; it is good, brave, and fatherly

policy. But I like to think that he has also realised the touching

significance of that marriage--old Rome, in the person of that candid,

loving child giving herself to young Italy, that upright, enthusiastic

young man who wears his uniform so jauntily. And may their nuptials be

definitive and fruitful; from them and from all the others may there

arise the great nation which, now that I begin to know you, I trust you

will soon become!”

Amidst the tottering of his former dream of an evangelical and universal

Rome, Pierre expressed these good wishes for the Eternal City’s future

fortune with such keen and deep emotion that Prada could not help

replying: “I thank you; that wish of yours is in the heart of every good

Italian.”

But his voice quavered, for even whilst he was looking at Celia and

Attilio, who stood smiling and talking together, he saw Benedetta and

Dario approach them, wearing the same joyful expression of perfect

happiness. And when the two couples were united, so radiant and so

triumphant, so full of superb and happy life, he no longer had strength

to stay there, see them, and suffer.

“I am frightfully thirsty,” he hoarsely exclaimed. “Let’s go to the

buffet to drink something.” And, thereupon, in order to avoid notice, he

so manoeuvred as to glide behind the throng, skirting the windows in the

direction of the entrance to the Hall of the Antiques, which was beyond

the gallery.

Whilst Pierre was following him they were parted by an eddy of the crowd,

and the young priest found himself carried towards the two loving couples

who still stood chatting together. And Celia, on recognising him,

beckoned to him in a friendly way. With her passionate cult for beauty,

she was enraptured with the appearance of Benedetta, before whom she

joined her little lily hands as before the image of the Madonna. “Oh!

Monsieur l’Abbe,” said she, “to please me now, do tell her how beautiful

she is, more beautiful than anything on earth, more beautiful than even

the sun, and the moon and stars. If you only knew, my dear, it makes me

quiver to see you so beautiful as that, as beautiful as happiness, as

beautiful as love itself!”

Benedetta began to laugh, while the two young men made merry. “But you

are as beautiful as I am, darling,” said the Contessina. “And if we are

beautiful it is because we are happy.”

“Yes, yes, happy,” Celia gently responded. “Do you remember the evening

when you told me that one didn’t succeed in marrying the Pope and the

King? But Attilio and I are marrying them, and yet we are very happy.”

“But we don’t marry them, Dario and I! On the contrary!” said Benedetta

gaily. “No matter; as you answered me that same evening, it is sufficient

that we should love one another, love saves the world.”

When Pierre at last succeeded in reaching the door of the Hall of the

Antiques, where the buffet was installed, he found Prada there,

motionless, gazing despite himself on the galling spectacle which he

desired to flee. A power stronger than his will had kept him there,

forcing him to turn round and look, and look again. And thus, with a

bleeding heart, he still lingered and witnessed the resumption of the

dancing, the first figure of a quadrille which the orchestra began to

play with a lively flourish of its brass instruments. Benedetta and

Dario, Celia and Attilio were _vis-à-vis_. And so charming and

delightful was the sight which the two couples presented dancing in the

white blaze, all youth and joy, that the King and Queen drew near to them

and became interested. And soon bravos of admiration rang out, while from

every heart spread a feeling of infinite tenderness.

“I’m dying of thirst, let’s go!” repeated Prada, at last managing to

wrench himself away from the torturing sight.

He called for some iced lemonade and drank the glassful at one draught,

gulping it down with the greedy eagerness of a man stricken with fever,

who will never more be able to quench the burning fire within him.

The Hall of the Antiques was a spacious room with mosaic pavement, and

decorations of stucco; and a famous collection of vases, bas-reliefs, and

statues, was disposed along its walls. The marbles predominated, but

there were a few bronzes, and among them a dying gladiator of extreme

beauty. The marvel however was the famous statue of Venus, a companion to

that of the Capitol, but with a more elegant and supple figure and with

the left arm falling loosely in a gesture of voluptuous surrender. That

evening a powerful electric reflector threw a dazzling light upon the

statue, which, in its divine and pure nudity, seemed to be endowed with

superhuman, immortal life. Against the end-wall was the buffet, a long

table covered with an embroidered cloth and laden with fruit, pastry, and

cold meats. Sheaves of flowers rose up amidst bottles of champagne, hot

punch, and iced _sorbetto_, and here and there were marshalled armies of

glasses, tea-cups, and broth-bowls, a perfect wealth of sparkling

crystal, porcelain, and silver. And a happy innovation had been to fill

half of the hall with rows of little tables, at which the guests, in lieu

of being obliged to refresh themselves standing, were able to sit down

and order what they desired as in a cafe.

At one of these little tables, Pierre perceived Narcisse seated near a

young woman, whom Prada, on approaching, recognised to be Lisbeth. “You

find me, you see, in delightful company,” gallantly exclaimed the

_attache_. “As we lost one another, I could think of nothing better than

of offering madame my arm to bring her here.”

“It was, in fact, a good idea,” said Lisbeth with her pretty laugh, “for

I was feeling very thirsty.”

They had ordered some iced coffee, which they were slowly sipping out of

little silver-gilt spoons.

“I have a terrible thirst, too,” declared the Count, “and I can’t quench

it. You will allow us to join you, will you not, my dear sir? Some of

that coffee will perhaps calm me.” And then to Lisbeth he added, “Ah! my

dear, allow me to introduce to you Monsieur l’Abbe Froment, a young

French priest of great distinction.”

Then for a long time they all four remained seated at that table,

chatting and making merry over certain of the guests who went by. Prada,

however, in spite of his usual gallantry towards Lisbeth, frequently

became absent-minded; at times he quite forgot her, being again mastered

by his anguish, and, in spite of all his efforts, his eyes ever turned

towards the neighbouring gallery whence the sound of music and dancing

reached him.

“Why, what are you thinking of, _caro mio_?” Lisbeth asked in her pretty

way, on seeing him at one moment so pale and lost. “Are you indisposed?”

He did not reply, however, but suddenly exclaimed, “Ah! look there,

that’s the real pair, there’s real love and happiness for you!”

With a jerk of the hand he designated Dario’s mother, the Marchioness

Montefiori and her second husband, Jules Laporte--that ex-sergeant of the

papal Swiss Guard, her junior by fifteen years, whom she had one day

hooked at the Corso with her eyes of fire, which yet had remained superb,

and whom she had afterwards triumphantly transformed into a Marquis

Montefiori in order to have him entirely to herself. Such was her passion

that she never relaxed her hold on him whether at ball or reception, but,

despite all usages, kept him beside her, and even made him escort her to

the buffet, so much did she delight in being able to exhibit him and say

that this handsome man was her own exclusive property. And standing there

side by side, the pair of them began to drink champagne and eat

sandwiches, she yet a marvel of massive beauty although she was over

fifty, and he with long wavy moustaches, and proud bearing, like a

fortunate adventurer whose jovial impudence pleased the ladies.

“You know that she had to extricate him from a nasty affair,” resumed the

Count in a lower tone. “Yes, he travelled in relics; he picked up a

living by supplying relics on commission to convents in France and

Switzerland; and he had launched quite a business in false relics with

the help of some Jews here who concocted little ancient reliquaries out

of mutton bones, with everything sealed and signed by the most genuine

authorities. The affair was hushed up, as three prelates were also

compromised in it! Ah! the happy man! Do you see how she devours him with

her eyes? And he, doesn’t he look quite a _grand seigneur_ by the mere

way in which he holds that plate for her whilst she eats the breast of a

fowl out of it!”

Then, in a rough way and with biting irony, he went on to speak of the

_amours_ of Rome. The Roman women, said he, were ignorant, obstinate, and

jealous. When a woman had managed to win a man, she kept him for ever, he

became her property, and she disposed of him as she pleased. By way of

proof, he cited many interminable _liaisons_, such as that of Donna

Serafina and Morano which, in time became virtual marriages; and he

sneered at such a lack of fancy, such an excess of fidelity whose only

ending, when it did end, was some very disagreeable unpleasantness.

At this, Lisbeth interrupted him. “But what is the matter with you this

evening, my dear?” she asked with a laugh. “What you speak of is on the

contrary very nice and pretty! When a man and a woman love one another

they ought to do so for ever!”

She looked delightful as she spoke, with her fine wavy blonde hair and

delicate fair complexion; and Narcisse with a languorous expression in

his half-closed eyes compared her to a Botticelli which he had seen at

Florence. However, the night was now far advanced, and Pierre had once

more sunk into gloomy thoughtfulness when he heard a passing lady remark

that they had already begun to dance the Cotillon in the gallery; and

thereupon he suddenly remembered that Monsignor Nani had given him an

appointment in the little Saloon of the Mirrors.

“Are you leaving?” hastily inquired Prada on seeing him rise and bow to

Lisbeth.

“No, no, not yet,” Pierre answered.

“Oh! all right. Don’t go away without me. I want to walk a little, and

I’ll see you home. It’s agreed, eh? You will find me here.”

The young priest had to cross two rooms, one hung with yellow and the

other with blue, before he at last reached the mirrored _salon_. This was

really an exquisite example of the _rococo_ style, a rotunda as it were

of pale mirrors framed with superb gilded carvings. Even the ceiling was

covered with mirrors disposed slantwise so that on every side things

multiplied, mingled, and appeared under all possible aspects. Discreetly

enough no electric lights had been placed in the room, the only

illumination being that of some pink tapers burning in a pair of

candelabra. The hangings and upholstery were of soft blue silk, and the

impression on entering was very sweet and charming, as if one had found

oneself in the abode of some fairy queen of the rills, a palace of limpid

water, illumined to its farthest depths by clusters of stars.

Pierre at once perceived Monsignor Nani, who was sitting on a low couch,

and, as the prelate had hoped, he was quite alone, for the Cotillon had

attracted almost everybody to the picture gallery. And the silence in the

little _salon_ was nearly perfect, for at that distance the blare of the

orchestra subsided into a faint, flute-like murmur. The young priest at

once apologised to the prelate for having kept him waiting.

“No, no, my dear son,” said Nani, with his inexhaustible amiability. “I

was very comfortable in this retreat--when the press of the crowd became

over-threatening I took refuge here.” He did not speak of the King and

Queen, but he allowed it to be understood that he had politely avoided

their company. If he had come to the _fete_ it was on account of his

sincere affection for Celia and also with a very delicate diplomatic

object, for the Church wished to avoid any appearance of having entirely

broken with the Buongiovanni family, that ancient house which was so

famous in the annals of the papacy. Doubtless the Vatican was unable to

subscribe to this marriage which seemed to unite old Rome with the young

Kingdom of Italy, but on the other hand it did not desire people to think

that it abandoned old and faithful supporters and took no interest in

what befell them.

“But come, my dear son,” the prelate resumed, “it is you who are now in

question. I told you that although the Congregation of the Index had

pronounced itself for the condemnation of your book, the sentence would

only be submitted to the Holy Father and signed by him on the day after

to-morrow. So you still have a whole day before you.”

At this Pierre could not refrain from a dolorous and vivacious

interruption.

“Alas! Monseigneur, what can I do?” said he; “I have thought it all over,

and I see no means, no opportunity of defending myself. How could I even

see his Holiness now that he is so ill?”

“Oh! ill, ill!” muttered Nani with his shrewd expression. “His Holiness

is ever so much better, for this very day, like every other Wednesday, I

had the honour to be received by him. When his Holiness is a little tired

and people say that he is very ill, he often lets them do so, for it

gives him a rest and enables him to judge certain ambitions and

manifestations of impatience around him.”

Pierre, however, was too upset to listen attentively. “No, it’s all

over,” he continued, “I’m in despair. You spoke to me of the possibility

of a miracle, but I am no great believer in miracles. Since I am defeated

here at Rome, I shall go away, I shall return to Paris, and continue the

struggle there. Oh! I cannot resign myself, my hope in salvation by the

practice of love cannot die, and I shall answer my denouncers in a new

book, in which I shall tell in what new soil the new religion will grow

up!”

Silence fell. Nani looked at him with his clear eyes in which

intelligence shone distinct and sharp like steel. And amidst the deep

calm, the warm heavy atmosphere of the little _salon_, whose mirrors were

starred with countless reflections of candles, a more sonorous burst of

music was suddenly wafted from the gallery, a rhythmical waltz melody,

which slowly expanded, then died away.

“My dear son,” said Nani, “anger is always harmful. You remember that on

your arrival here I promised that if your own efforts to obtain an

interview with the Holy Father should prove unavailing, I would myself

endeavour to secure an audience for you.” Then, seeing how agitated the

young priest was getting, he went on: “Listen to me and don’t excite

yourself. His Holiness, unfortunately, is not always prudently advised.

Around him are persons whose devotion, however great, is at times

deficient in intelligence. I told you that, and warned you against

inconsiderate applications. And this is why, already three weeks ago, I

myself handed your book to his Holiness in the hope that he would deign

to glance at it. I rightly suspected that it had not been allowed to

reach him. And this is what I am instructed to tell you: his Holiness,

who has had the great kindness to read your book, expressly desires to

see you.”

A cry of joy and gratitude died away in Pierre’s throat: “Ah!

Monseigneur. Ah! Monseigneur!”

But Nani quickly silenced him and glanced around with an expression of

keen anxiety as if he feared that some one might hear them. “Hush! Hush!”

said he, “it is a secret. His Holiness wishes to see you privately,

without taking anybody else into his confidence. Listen attentively. It

is now two o’clock in the morning. Well, this very day, at nine in the

evening precisely, you must present yourself at the Vatican and at every

door ask for Signor Squadra. You will invariably be allowed to pass.

Signor Squadra will be waiting for you upstairs, and will introduce you.

And not a word, mind; not a soul must have the faintest suspicion of

these things.”

Pierre’s happiness and gratitude at last flowed forth. He had caught hold

of the prelate’s soft, plump hands, and stammered, “Ah! Monseigneur, how

can I express my gratitude to you? If you only knew how full my soul was

of night and rebellion since I realised that I had been a mere plaything

in the hands of those powerful cardinals. But you have saved me, and

again I feel sure that I shall win the victory, for I shall at last be

able to fling myself at the feet of his Holiness the father of all truth

and all justice. He can but absolve me, I who love him, I who admire him,

I who have never battled for aught but his own policy and most cherished

ideas. No, no, it is impossible; he will not sign that judgment; he will

not condemn my book!”

Releasing his hands, Nani sought to calm him with a fatherly gesture,

whilst retaining a faint smile of contempt for such a useless expenditure

of enthusiasm. At last he succeeded, and begged him to retire. The

orchestra was again playing more loudly in the distance. And when the

young priest at last withdrew, thanking him once more, he said very

simply, “Remember, my dear son, that only obedience is great.”

Pierre, whose one desire now was to take himself off, found Prada almost

immediately afterwards in the first reception-room. Their Majesties had

just left the ball in grand ceremony, escorted to the threshold by the

Buongiovannis and the Saccos. And before departing the Queen had

maternally kissed Celia, whilst the King shook hands with

Attilio--honours instinct with a charming good nature which made the

members of both families quite radiant. However, a good many of the

guests were following the example of the sovereigns and disappearing in

small batches. And the Count, who seemed strangely nervous, and showed

more sternness and bitterness than ever, was, on his side, also eager to

be gone. “Ah! it’s you at last. I was waiting for you,” he said to

Pierre. “Well, let’s get off at once, eh? Your compatriot Monsieur

Narcisse Habert asked me to tell you not to look for him. The fact is, he

has gone to see my friend Lisbeth to her carriage. I myself want a breath

of fresh air, a stroll, and so I’ll go with you as far as the Via

Giulia.”

Then, as they took their things from the cloak-room, he could not help

sneering and saying in his brutal way: “I saw your good friends go off,

all four together. It’s lucky that you prefer to go home on foot, for

there was no room for you in the carriage. What superb impudence it was

on the part of that Donna Serafina to drag herself here, at her age, with

that Morano of hers, so as to triumph over the return of the fickle one!

And the two others, the two young ones--ah! I confess that I can hardly

speak calmly of _them_, for in parading here together as they did this

evening, they have shown an impudence and a cruelty such as is rarely

seen!” Prada’s hands trembled, and he murmured: “A good journey, a good

journey to the young man, since he is going to Naples. Yes, I heard Celia

say that he was starting for Naples this evening at six o’clock. Well, my

wishes go with him; a good journey!”

The two men found the change delightful when they at last emerged from

the stifling heat of the reception-rooms into the lovely, cool, and

limpid night. It was a night illumined by a superb full moon, one of

those matchless Roman nights when the city slumbers in Elysian radiance,

steeped in a dream of the Infinite, under the vast vault of heaven. And

they took the most agreeable route, going down the Corso proper and then

turning into the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

Prada had grown somewhat calmer, but remained full of irony. To divert

his mind, no doubt, he talked on in the most voluble manner, reverting to

the women of Rome and to that _fete_ which he had at first found

splendid, but at which he now began to rail.

“Oh! of course they have very fine gowns,” said he, speaking of the

women; “but gowns which don’t fit them, gowns which are sent them from

Paris, and which, of course, they can’t try on. It’s just the same with

their jewels; they still have diamonds and pearls, in particular, which

are very fine, but they are so wretchedly, so heavily mounted that they

look frightful. And if you only knew how ignorant and frivolous these

women are, despite all their conceit! Everything is on the surface with

them, even religion: there’s nothing beneath. I looked at them eating at

the buffet. Oh! they at least have fine appetites. This evening some

decorum was observed, there wasn’t too much gorging. But at one of the

Court balls you would see a general pillage, the buffets besieged, and

everything swallowed up amidst a scramble of amazing voracity!”

To all this talk Pierre only returned monosyllabic responses. He was

wrapped in overflowing delight at the thought of that audience with the

Pope, which, unable as he was to confide in any one, he strove to arrange

and picture in his own mind, even in its pettiest details. And meantime

the footsteps of the two men rang out on the dry pavement of the clear,

broad, deserted thoroughfare, whose black shadows were sharply outlined

by the moonlight.

All at once Prada himself became silent. His loquacious _bravura_ was

exhausted, the frightful struggle going on in his mind wholly possessed

and paralysed him. Twice already he had dipped his hand into his coat

pocket and felt the pencilled note whose four lines he mentally repeated:

“A legend avers that the fig-tree of Judas now grows at Frascati, and

that its fruit is deadly for him who may desire to become pope. Eat not

the poisoned figs, nor give them either to your servants or your fowls.”

The note was there; he could feel it; and if he had desired to accompany

Pierre, it was in order that he might drop it into the letter-box at the

Palazzo Boccanera. And he continued to step out briskly, so that within

another ten minutes that note would surely be in the box, for no power in

the world could prevent it, since such was his express determination.

Never would he commit such a crime as to allow people to be poisoned.

But he was suffering such abominable torture. That Benedetta and that

Dario had raised such a tempest of jealous hatred within him! For them he

forgot Lisbeth whom he loved, and even that flesh of his flesh, the child

of whom he was so proud. All sex as he was, eager to conquer and subdue,

he had never cared for facile loves. His passion was to overcome. And now

there was a woman in the world who defied him, a woman forsooth whom he

had bought, whom he had married, who had been handed over to him, but who

would never, never be his. Ah! in the old days, to subdue her, he would

if needful have fired Rome like a Nero; but now he asked himself what he

could possibly do to prevent her from belonging to another. That galling

thought made the blood gush from his gaping wound. How that woman and her

lover must deride him! And to think that they had sought to turn him to

ridicule by a baseless charge, an arrant lie which still and ever made

him smart, all proof of its falsity to the contrary. He, on his side, had

accused them in the past without much belief in what he said, but now the

charges he had imputed to them must come true, for they were free, freed

at all events of the religious bond, and that no doubt was their only

care. And then visions of their happiness passed before his eyes,

infuriating him. Ah! no, ah! no, it was impossible, he would rather

destroy the world!

Then, as he and Pierre turned out of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele to

thread the old narrow tortuous streets leading to the Via Giulia, he

pictured himself dropping the note into the letter-box at the palazzo.

And next he conjured up what would follow. The note would lie in the

letter-box till morning. At an early hour Don Vigilio, the secretary, who

by the Cardinal’s express orders kept the key of the box, would come

down, find the note, and hand it to his Eminence, who never allowed

another to open any communication addressed to him. And then the figs

would be thrown away, there would be no further possibility of crime, the

black world would in all prudence keep silent. But if the note should not

be in the letter-box, what would happen then? And admitting that

supposition he pictured the figs placed on the table at the one o’clock

meal, in their pretty little leaf-covered basket. Dario would be there as

usual, alone with his uncle, since he was not to leave for Naples till

the evening. And would both the uncle and the nephew eat the figs, or

would only one of them partake of the fruit, and which of them would that

be? At this point Prada’s clearness of vision failed him; again he

conjured up Destiny on the march, that Destiny which he had met on the

road from Frascati, going on towards its unknown goal, athwart all

obstacles without possibility of stoppage. Aye, the little basket of figs

went ever on and on to accomplish its fateful purpose, which no hand in

the world had power enough to prevent.

And at last, on either hand of Pierre and Prada, the Via Giulia stretched

away in a long line white with moonlight, and the priest emerged as if

from a dream at sight of the Palazzo Boccanera rising blackly under the

silver sky. Three o’clock struck at a neighbouring church. And he felt

himself quivering slightly as once again he heard near him the dolorous

moan of a lion wounded unto death, that low involuntary growl which the

Count, amidst the frightful struggle of his feelings, had for the third

time allowed to escape him. But immediately afterwards he burst into a

sneering laugh, and pressing the priest’s hands, exclaimed: “No, no, I am

not going farther. If I were seen here at this hour, people would think

that I had fallen in love with my wife again.”

And thereupon he lighted a cigar, and retraced his steps in the clear

night, without once looking round.

XIII.

WHEN Pierre awoke he was much surprised to hear eleven o’clock striking.

Fatigued as he was by that ball where he had lingered so long, he had

slept like a child in delightful peacefulness, and as soon as he opened

his eyes the radiant sunshine filled him with hope. His first thought was

that he would see the Pope that evening at nine o’clock. Ten more hours

to wait! What would he be able to do with himself during that lovely day,

whose radiant sky seemed to him of such happy augury? He rose and opened

the windows to admit the warm air which, as he had noticed on the day of

his arrival, had a savour of fruit and flowers, a blending, as it were,

of the perfume of rose and orange. Could this possibly be December? What

a delightful land, that the spring should seem to flower on the very

threshold of winter! Then, having dressed, he was leaning out of the

window to glance across the golden Tiber at the evergreen slopes of the

Janiculum, when he espied Benedetta seated in the abandoned garden of the

mansion. And thereupon, unable to keep still, full of a desire for life,

gaiety, and beauty, he went down to join her.

With radiant visage and outstretched hands, she at once vented the cry he

had expected: “Ah! my dear Abbe, how happy I am!”

They had often spent their mornings in that quiet, forsaken nook; but

what sad mornings those had been, hopeless as they both were! To-day,

however, the weed-grown paths, the box-plants growing in the old basin,

the orange-trees which alone marked the outline of the beds--all seemed

full of charm, instinct with a sweet and dreamy cosiness in which it was

very pleasant to lull one’s joy. And it was so warm, too, beside the big

laurel-bush, in the corner where the streamlet of water ever fell with

flute-like music from the gaping, tragic mask.

“Ah!” repeated Benedetta, “how happy I am! I was stifling upstairs, and

my heart felt such a need of space, and air, and sunlight, that I came

down here!”

She was seated on the fallen column beside the old marble sarcophagus,

and desired the priest to place himself beside her. Never had he seen her

looking so beautiful, with her black hair encompassing her pure face,

which in the sunshine appeared pinky and delicate as a flower. Her large,

fathomless eyes showed in the light like braziers rolling gold, and her

childish mouth, all candour and good sense, laughed the laugh of one who

was at last free to love as her heart listed, without offending either

God or man. And, dreaming aloud, she built up plans for the future. “It’s

all simple enough,” said she; “I have already obtained a separation, and

shall easily get that changed into civil divorce now that the Church has

annulled my marriage. And I shall marry Dario next spring, perhaps

sooner, if the formalities can be hastened. He is going to Naples this

evening about the sale of some property which we still possess there, but

which must now be sold, for all this business has cost us a lot of money.

Still, that doesn’t matter since we now belong to one another. And when

he comes back in a few days, what a happy time we shall have! I could not

sleep when I got back from that splendid ball last night, for my head was

so full of plans--oh! splendid plans, as you shall see, for I mean to

keep you in Rome until our marriage.”

Like herself, Pierre began to laugh, so gained upon by this explosion of

youth and happiness that he had to make a great effort to refrain from

speaking of his own delight, his hopefulness at the thought of his coming

interview with the Pope. Of that, however, he had sworn to speak to

nobody.

Every now and again, amidst the quivering silence of the sunlit garden,

the cry of a bird persistently rang out; and Benedetta, raising her head

and looking at a cage hanging beside one of the first-floor windows,

jestingly exclaimed: “Yes, yes, Tata, make a good noise, show that you

are pleased, my dear. Everybody in the house must be pleased now.” Then,

turning towards Pierre, she added gaily: “You know Tata, don’t you? What!

No? Why, Tata is my uncle’s parrot. I gave her to him last spring; he’s

very fond of her, and lets her help herself out of his plate. And he

himself attends to her, puts her out and takes her in, and keeps her in

his dining-room, for fear lest she should take cold, as that is the only

room of his which is at all warm.”

Pierre in his turn looked up and saw the bird, one of those pretty little

parrots with soft, silky, dull-green plumage. It was hanging by the beak

from a bar of its cage, swinging itself and flapping its wings, all mirth

in the bright sunshine.

“Does the bird talk?” he asked.

“No, she only screams,” replied Benedetta, laughing. “Still my uncle

pretends that he understands her.” And then the young woman abruptly

darted to another subject, as if this mention of her uncle the Cardinal

had made her think of the uncle by marriage whom she had in Paris. “I

suppose you have heard from Viscount de la Choue,” said she. “I had a

letter from him yesterday, in which he said how grieved he was that you

were unable to see the Holy Father, as he had counted on you for the

triumph of his ideas.”

Pierre indeed frequently heard from the Viscount, who was greatly

distressed by the importance which his adversary, Baron de Fouras, had

acquired since his success with the International Pilgrimage of the

Peter’s Pence. The old, uncompromising Catholic party would awaken, said

the Viscount, and all the conquests of Neo-Catholicism would be

threatened, if one could not obtain the Holy Father’s formal adhesion to

the proposed system of free guilds, in order to overcome the demand for

closed guilds which was brought forward by the Conservatives. And the

Viscount overwhelmed Pierre with injunctions, and sent him all sorts of

complicated plans in his eagerness to see him received at the Vatican.

“Yes, yes,” muttered the young priest in reply to Benedetta. “I had a

letter on Sunday, and found another waiting for me on my return from

Frascati yesterday. Ah! it would make me very happy to be able to send

the Viscount some good news.” Then again Pierre’s joy overflowed at the

thought that he would that evening see the Pope, and, on opening his

loving heart to the Pontiff, receive the supreme encouragement which

would strengthen him in his mission to work social salvation in the name

of the lowly and the poor. And he could not restrain himself any longer,

but let his secret escape him: “It’s settled, you know,” said he. “My

audience is for this evening.”

Benedetta did not understand at first. “What audience?” she asked.

“Oh! Monsignor Nani was good enough to tell me at the ball this morning,

that the Holy Father has read my book and desires to see me. I shall be

received this evening at nine o’clock.”

At this the Contessina flushed with pleasure, participating in the

delight of the young priest to whom she had grown much attached. And this

success of his, coming in the midst of her own felicity, acquired

extraordinary importance in her eyes as if it were an augury of complete

success for one and all. Superstitious as she was, she raised a cry of

rapture and excitement: “Ah! _Dio_, that will bring us good luck. How

happy I am, my friend, to see happiness coming to you at the same time as

to me! You cannot think how pleased I am! And all will go well now, it’s

certain, for a house where there is any one whom the Pope welcomes is

blessed, the thunder of Heaven falls on it no more!”

She laughed yet more loudly as she spoke, and clapped her hands with such

exuberant gaiety that Pierre became anxious. “Hush! hush!” said he, “it’s

a secret. Pray don’t mention it to any one, either your aunt or even his

Eminence. Monsignor Nani would be much annoyed.”

She thereupon promised to say nothing, and in a kindly voice spoke of

Nani as a benefactor, for was she not indebted to him for the dissolution

of her marriage? Then, with a fresh explosion of gaiety, she went on:

“But come, my friend, is not happiness the only good thing? You don’t ask

me to weep over the suffering poor to-day! Ah! the happiness of life,

that’s everything. People don’t suffer or feel cold or hungry when they

are happy.”

He looked at her in stupefaction at the idea of that strange solution of

the terrible question of human misery. And suddenly he realised that,

with that daughter of the sun who had inherited so many centuries of

sovereign aristocracy, all his endeavours at conversion were vain. He had

wished to bring her to a Christian love for the lowly and the wretched,

win her over to the new, enlightened, and compassionate Italy that he had

dreamt of; but if she had been moved by the sufferings of the multitude

at the time when she herself had suffered, when grievous wounds had made

her own heart bleed, she was no sooner healed than she proclaimed the

doctrine of universal felicity like a true daughter of a clime of burning

summers, and winters as mild as spring. “But everybody is not happy!”

said he.

“Yes, yes, they are!” she exclaimed. “You don’t know the poor! Give a

girl of the Trastevere the lad she loves, and she becomes as radiant as a

queen, and finds her dry bread quite sweet. The mothers who save a child

from sickness, the men who conquer in a battle, or who win at the

lottery, one and all in fact are like that, people only ask for good

fortune and pleasure. And despite all your striving to be just and to

arrive at a more even distribution of fortune, the only satisfied ones

will be those whose hearts sing--often without their knowing the

cause--on a fine sunny day like this.”

Pierre made a gesture of surrender, not wishing to sadden her by again

pleading the cause of all the poor ones who at that very moment were

somewhere agonising with physical or mental pain. But, all at once,

through the luminous mild atmosphere a shadow seemed to fall, tingeing

joy with sadness, the sunshine with despair. And the sight of the old

sarcophagus, with its bacchanal of satyrs and nymphs, brought back the

memory that death lurks even amidst the bliss of passion, the unsatiated

kisses of love. For a moment the clear song of the water sounded in

Pierre’s ears like a long-drawn sob, and all seemed to crumble in the

terrible shadow which had fallen from the invisible.

Benedetta, however, caught hold of his hands and roused him once more to

the delight of being there beside her. “Your pupil is rebellious, is she

not, my friend?” said she. “But what would you have? There are ideas

which can’t enter into our heads. No, you will never get those things

into the head of a Roman girl. So be content with loving us as we are,

beautiful with all our strength, as beautiful as we can be.”

She herself, in her resplendent happiness, looked at that moment so

beautiful that he trembled as in presence of a divinity whose

all-powerfulness swayed the world. “Yes, yes,” he stammered, “beauty,

beauty, still and ever sovereign. Ah! why can it not suffice to satisfy

the eternal longings of poor suffering men?”

“Never mind!” she gaily responded. “Do not distress yourself; it is

pleasant to live. And now let us go upstairs, my aunt must be waiting.”

The midday meal was served at one o’clock, and on the few occasions when

Pierre did not eat at one or another restaurant a cover was laid for him

at the ladies’ table in the little dining-room of the second floor,

overlooking the courtyard. At the same hour, in the sunlit dining-room of

the first floor, whose windows faced the Tiber, the Cardinal likewise sat

down to table, happy in the society of his nephew Dario, for his

secretary, Don Vigilio, who also was usually present, never opened his

mouth unless to reply to some question. And the two services were quite

distinct, each having its own kitchen and servants, the only thing at all

common to them both being a large room downstairs which served as a

pantry and store-place.

Although the second-floor dining-room was so gloomy, saddened by the

greeny half-light of the courtyard, the meal shared that day by the two

ladies and the young priest proved a very gay one. Even Donna Serafina,

usually so rigid, seemed to relax under the influence of great internal

felicity. She was no doubt still enjoying her triumph of the previous

evening, and it was she who first spoke of the ball and sung its praises,

though the presence of the King and Queen had much embarrassed her, said

she. According to her account, she had only avoided presentation by

skilful strategy; however she hoped that her well-known affection for

Celia, whose god-mother she was, would explain her presence in that

neutral mansion where Vatican and Quirinal had met. At the same time she

must have retained certain scruples, for she declared that directly after

dinner she was going to the Vatican to see the Cardinal Secretary, to

whom she desired to speak about an enterprise of which she was

lady-patroness. This visit would compensate for her attendance at the

Buongiovanni entertainment. And on the other hand never had Donna

Serafina seemed so zealous and hopeful of her brother’s speedy accession

to the throne of St. Peter: therein lay a supreme triumph, an elevation

of her race, which her pride deemed both needful and inevitable; and

indeed during Leo XIII’s last indisposition she had actually concerned

herself about the trousseau which would be needed and which would require

to be marked with the new Pontiff’s arms.

On her side, Benedetta was all gaiety during the repast, laughing at

everything, and speaking of Celia and Attilio with the passionate

affection of a woman whose own happiness delights in that of her friends.

Then, just as the dessert had been served, she turned to the servant with

an air of surprise: “Well, and the figs, Giacomo?” she asked.

Giacomo, slow and sleepy of notion, looked at her without understanding.

However, Victorine was crossing the room, and Benedetta’s next question

was for her: “Why are the figs not served, Victorine?” she inquired.

“What figs, Contessina?”

“Why the figs I saw in the pantry as I passed through it this morning on

my way to the garden. They were in a little basket and looked superb. I

was even astonished to see that there were still some fresh figs left at

this season. I’m very fond of them, and felt quite pleased at the thought

that I should eat some at dinner.”

Victorine began to laugh: “Ah! yes, Contessina, I understand,” she

replied. “They were some figs which that priest of Frascati, whom you

know very well, brought yesterday evening as a present for his Eminence.

I was there, and I heard him repeat three or four times that they were a

present, and were to be put on his Eminence’s table without a leaf being

touched. And so one did as he said.”

“Well, that’s nice,” retorted Benedetta with comical indignation. “What

_gourmands_ my uncle and Dario are to regale themselves without us! They

might have given us a share!”

Donna Serafina thereupon intervened, and asked Victorine: “You are

speaking, are you not, of that priest who used to come to the villa at

Frascati?”

“Yes, yes, Abbe Santobono his name is, he officiates at the little church

of St. Mary in the Fields. He always asks for Abbe Paparelli when he

calls; I think they were at the seminary together. And it was Abbe

Paparelli who brought him to the pantry with his basket last night. To

tell the truth, the basket was forgotten there in spite of all the

injunctions, so that nobody would have eaten the figs to-day if Abbe

Paparelli hadn’t run down just now and carried them upstairs as piously

as if they were the Blessed Sacrament. It’s true though that his Eminence

is so fond of them.”

“My brother won’t do them much honour to-day,” remarked the Princess. “He

is slightly indisposed. He passed a bad night.” The repeated mention of

Abbe Paparelli had made the old lady somewhat thoughtful. She had

regarded the train-bearer with displeasure ever since she had noticed the

extraordinary influence he was gaining over the Cardinal, despite all his

apparent humility and self-effacement. He was but a servant and

apparently a very insignificant one, yet he governed, and she could feel

that he combated her own influence, often undoing things which she had

done to further her brother’s interests. Twice already, moreover, she had

suspected him of having urged the Cardinal to courses which she looked

upon as absolute blunders. But perhaps she was wrong; she did the

train-bearer the justice to admit that he had great merits and displayed

exemplary piety.

However, Benedetta went on laughing and jesting, and as Victorine had now

withdrawn, she called the man-servant: “Listen, Giacomo, I have a

commission for you.” Then she broke off to say to her aunt and Pierre:

“Pray let us assert our rights. I can see them at table almost underneath

us. Uncle is taking the leaves off the basket and serving himself with a

smile; then he passes the basket to Dario, who passes it on to Don

Vigilio. And all three of them eat and enjoy the figs. You can see them,

can’t you?” She herself could see them well. And it was her desire to be

near Dario, the constant flight of her thoughts to him that now made her

picture him at table with the others. Her heart was down below, and there

was nothing there that she could not see, and hear, and smell, with such

keenness of the senses did her love endow her. “Giacomo,” she resumed,

“you are to go down and tell his Eminence that we are longing to taste

his figs, and that it will be very kind of him if he will send us such as

he can spare.”

Again, however, did Donna Serafina intervene, recalling her wonted

severity of voice: “Giacomo, you will please stay here.” And to her niece

she added: “That’s enough childishness! I dislike such silly freaks.”

“Oh! aunt,” Benedetta murmured. “But I’m so happy, it’s so long since I

laughed so good-heartedly.”

Pierre had hitherto remained listening, enlivened by the sight of her

gaiety. But now, as a little chill fell, he raised his voice to say that

on the previous day he himself had been astonished to see the famous

fig-tree of Frascati still bearing fruit so late in the year. This was

doubtless due, however, to the tree’s position and the protection of a

high wall.

“Ah! so you saw the tree?” said Benedetta.

“Yes, and I even travelled with those figs which you would so much like

to taste.”

“Why, how was that?”

The young man already regretted the reply which had escaped him. However,

having gone so far, he preferred to say everything. “I met somebody at

Frascati who had come there in a carriage and who insisted on driving me

back to Rome,” said he. “On the way we picked up Abbe Santobono, who was

bravely making the journey on foot with his basket in his hand. And

afterwards we stopped at an _osteria_--” Then he went on to describe the

drive and relate his impressions whilst crossing the Campagna amidst the

falling twilight. But Benedetta gazed at him fixedly, aware as she was of

Prada’s frequent visits to the land and houses which he owned at

Frascati; and suddenly she murmured: “Somebody, somebody, it was the

Count, was it not?”

“Yes, madame, the Count,” Pierre answered. “I saw him again last night;

he was overcome, and really deserves to be pitied.”

The two women took no offence at this charitable remark which fell from

the young priest with such deep and natural emotion, full as he was of

overflowing love and compassion for one and all. Donna Serafina remained

motionless as if she had not even heard him, and Benedetta made a gesture

which seemed to imply that she had neither pity nor hatred to express for

a man who had become a perfect stranger to her. However, she no longer

laughed, but, thinking of the little basket which had travelled in

Prada’s carriage, she said: “Ah! I don’t care for those figs at all now,

I am even glad that I haven’t eaten any of them.”

Immediately after the coffee Donna Serafina withdrew, saying that she was

at once going to the Vatican; and the others, being left to themselves,

lingered at table, again full of gaiety, and chatting like friends. The

priest, with his feverish impatience, once more referred to the audience

which he was to have that evening. It was now barely two o’clock, and he

had seven more hours to wait. How should he employ that endless

afternoon? Thereupon Benedetta good-naturedly made him a proposal. “I’ll

tell you what,” said she, “as we are all in such good spirits we mustn’t

leave one another. Dario has his victoria, you know. He must have

finished lunch by now, and I’ll ask him to take us for a long drive along

the Tiber.”

This fine project so delighted her that she began to clap her hands; but

just then Don Vigilio appeared with a scared look on his face. “Isn’t the

Princess here?” he inquired.

“No, my aunt has gone out. What is the matter?”

“His Eminence sent me. The Prince has just felt unwell on rising from

table. Oh! it’s nothing--nothing serious, no doubt.”

Benedetta raised a cry of surprise rather than anxiety: “What, Dario!

Well, we’ll all go down. Come with me, Monsieur l’Abbe. He mustn’t get

ill if he is to take us for a drive!” Then, meeting Victorine on the

stairs, she bade her follow. “Dario isn’t well,” she said. “You may be

wanted.”

They all four entered the spacious, antiquated, and simply furnished

bed-room where the young Prince had lately been laid up for a whole

month. It was reached by way of a small _salon_, and from an adjoining

dressing-room a passage conducted to the Cardinal’s apartments, the

relatively small dining-room, bed-room, and study, which had been devised

by subdividing one of the huge galleries of former days. In addition, the

passage gave access to his Eminence’s private chapel, a bare, uncarpeted,

chairless room, where there was nothing beyond the painted, wooden altar,

and the hard, cold tiles on which to kneel and pray.

On entering, Benedetta hastened to the bed where Dario was lying, still

fully dressed. Near him, in fatherly fashion, stood Cardinal Boccanera,

who, amidst his dawning anxiety, retained his proud and lofty

bearing--the calmness of a soul beyond reproach. “Why, what is the

matter, Dario _mio_?” asked the young woman.

He smiled, eager to reassure her. One only noticed that he was very pale,

with a look as of intoxication on his face.

“Oh! it’s nothing, mere giddiness,” he replied. “It’s just as if I had

drunk too much. All at once things swam before my eyes, and I thought I

was going to fall. And then I only had time to come and fling myself on

the bed.”

Then he drew a long breath, as though talking exhausted him, and the

Cardinal in his turn gave some details. “We had just finished our meal,”

said he, “I was giving Don Vigilio some orders for this afternoon, and

was about to rise when I saw Dario get up and reel. He wouldn’t sit down

again, but came in here, staggering like a somnambulist, and fumbling at

the doors to open them. We followed him without understanding. And I

confess that I don’t yet comprehend it.”

So saying, the Cardinal punctuated his surprise by waving his arm towards

the rooms, through which a gust of misfortune seemed to have suddenly

swept. All the doors had remained wide open: the dressing-room could be

seen, and then the passage, at the end of which appeared the dining-room,

in a disorderly state, like an apartment suddenly vacated; the table

still laid, the napkins flung here and there, and the chairs pushed back.

As yet, however, there was no alarm.

Benedetta made the remark which is usually made in such cases: “I hope

you haven’t eaten anything which has disagreed with you.”

The Cardinal, smiling, again waved his hand as if to attest the frugality

of his table. “Oh!” said he, “there were only some eggs, some lamb

cutlets, and a dish of sorrel--they couldn’t have overloaded his stomach.

I myself only drink water; he takes just a sip of white wine. No, no, the

food has nothing to do with it.”

“Besides, in that case his Eminence and I would also have felt

indisposed,” Don Vigilio made bold to remark.

Dario, after momentarily closing his eyes, opened them again, and once

more drew a long breath, whilst endeavouring to laugh. “Oh, it will be

nothing;” he said. “I feel more at ease already. I must get up and stir

myself.”

“In that case,” said Benedetta, “this is what I had thought of. You will

take Monsieur l’Abbe Froment and me for a long drive in the Campagna.”

“Willingly. It’s a nice idea. Victorine, help me.”

Whilst speaking he had raised himself by means of one arm; but, before

the servant could approach, a slight convulsion seized him, and he fell

back again as if overcome by a fainting fit. It was the Cardinal, still

standing by the bedside, who caught him in his arms, whilst the

Contessina this time lost her head: “_Dio, Dio_! It has come on him

again. Quick, quick, a doctor!”

“Shall I run for one?” asked Pierre, whom the scene was also beginning to

upset.

“No, no, not you; stay with me. Victorine will go at once. She knows the

address. Doctor Giordano, Victorine.”

The servant hurried away, and a heavy silence fell on the room where the

anxiety became more pronounced every moment. Benedetta, now quite pale,

had again approached the bed, whilst the Cardinal looked down at Dario,

whom he still held in his arms. And a terrible suspicion, vague,

indeterminate as yet, had just awoke in the old man’s mind: Dario’s face

seemed to him to be ashen, to wear that mask of terrified anguish which

he had already remarked on the countenance of his dearest friend,

Monsignor Gallo, when he had held him in his arms, in like manner, two

hours before his death. There was also the same swoon and the same

sensation of clasping a cold form whose heart ceases to beat. And above

everything else there was in Boccanera’s mind the same growing thought of

poison, poison coming one knew not whence or how, but mysteriously

striking down those around him with the suddenness of lightning. And for

a long time he remained with his head bent over the face of his nephew,

that last scion of his race, seeking, studying, and recognising the signs

of the mysterious, implacable disorder which once already had rent his

heart atwain.

But Benedetta addressed him in a low, entreating voice: “You will tire

yourself, uncle. Let me take him a little, I beg you. Have no fear, I’ll

hold him very gently, he will feel that it is I, and perhaps that will

rouse him.”

At last the Cardinal raised his head and looked at her, and allowed her

to take his place after kissing her with distracted passion, his eyes the

while full of tears--a sudden burst of emotion in which his great love

for the young woman melted the stern frigidity which he usually affected.

“Ah! my poor child, my poor child!” he stammered, trembling from head to

foot like an oak-tree about to fall. Immediately afterwards, however, he

mastered himself, and whilst Pierre and Don Vigilio, mute and motionless,

regretted that they could be of no help, he walked slowly to and fro.

Soon, moreover, that bed-chamber became too small for all the thoughts

revolving in his mind, and he strayed first into the dressing-room and

then down the passage as far as the dining-room. And again and again he

went to and fro, grave and impassible, his head low, ever lost in the

same gloomy reverie. What were the multitudinous thoughts stirring in the

brain of that believer, that haughty Prince who had given himself to God

and could do naught to stay inevitable Destiny? From time to time he

returned to the bedside, observed the progress of the disorder, and then

started off again at the same slow regular pace, disappearing and

reappearing, carried along as it were by the monotonous alternations of

forces which man cannot control. Possibly he was mistaken, possibly this

was some mere indisposition at which the doctor would smile. One must

hope and wait. And again he went off and again he came back; and amidst

the heavy silence nothing more clearly bespoke the torture of anxious

fear than the rhythmical footsteps of that tall old man who was thus

awaiting Destiny.

The door opened, and Victorine came in breathless. “I found the doctor,

here he is,” she gasped.

With his little pink face and white curls, his discreet paternal bearing

which gave him the air of an amiable prelate, Doctor Giordano came in

smiling; but on seeing that room and all the anxious people waiting in

it, he turned very grave, at once assuming the expression of profound

respect for all ecclesiastical secrets which he had acquired by long

practice among the clergy. And when he had glanced at the sufferer he let

but a low murmur escape him: “What, again! Is it beginning again!”

He was probably alluding to the knife thrust for which he had recently

tended Dario. Who could be thus relentlessly pursuing that poor and

inoffensive young prince? However no one heard the doctor unless it were

Benedetta, and she was so full of feverish impatience, so eager to be

tranquillised, that she did not listen but burst into fresh entreaties:

“Oh! doctor, pray look at him, examine him, tell us that it is nothing.

It can’t be anything serious, since he was so well and gay but a little

while ago. It’s nothing serious, is it?”

“You are right no doubt, Contessina, it can be nothing dangerous. We will

see.”

However, on turning round, Doctor Giordano perceived the Cardinal, who

with regular, thoughtful footsteps had come back from the dining-room to

place himself at the foot of the bed. And while bowing, the doctor

doubtless detected a gleam of mortal anxiety in the dark eyes fixed upon

his own, for he added nothing but began to examine Dario like a man who

realises that time is precious. And as his examination progressed the

affable optimism which usually appeared upon his countenance gave place

to ashen gravity, a covert terror which made his lips slightly tremble.

It was he who had attended Monsignor Gallo when the latter had been

carried off so mysteriously; it was he who for imperative reasons had

then delivered a certificate stating the cause of death to be infectious

fever; and doubtless he now found the same terrible symptoms as in that

case, a leaden hue overspreading the sufferer’s features, a stupor as of

excessive intoxication; and, old Roman practitioner that he was,

accustomed to sudden deaths, he realised that the _malaria_ which kills

was passing, that _malaria_ which science does not yet fully understand,

which may come from the putrescent exhalations of the Tiber unless it be

but a name for the ancient poison of the legends.

As the doctor raised his head his glance again encountered the black eyes

of the Cardinal, which never left him. “Signor Giordano,” said his

Eminence, “you are not over-anxious, I hope? It is only some case of

indigestion, is it not?”

The doctor again bowed. By the slight quiver of the Cardinal’s voice he

understood how acute was the anxiety of that powerful man, who once more

was stricken in his dearest affections.

“Your Eminence must be right,” he said, “there’s a bad digestion

certainly. Such accidents sometimes become dangerous when fever

supervenes. I need not tell your Eminence how thoroughly you may rely on

my prudence and zeal.” Then he broke off and added in a clear

professional voice: “We must lose no time; the Prince must be undressed.

I should prefer to remain alone with him for a moment.”

Whilst speaking in this way, however, Doctor Giordano detained Victorine,

who would be able to help him, said he; should he need any further

assistance he would take Giacomo. His evident desire was to get rid of

the members of the family in order that he might have more freedom of

action. And the Cardinal, who understood him, gently led Benedetta into

the dining-room, whither Pierre and Don Vigilio followed.

When the doors had been closed, the most mournful and oppressive silence

reigned in that dining-room, which the bright sun of winter filled with

such delightful warmth and radiance. The table was still laid, its cloth

strewn here and there with bread-crumbs; and a coffee cup had remained

half full. In the centre stood the basket of figs, whose covering of

leaves had been removed. However, only two or three of the figs were

missing. And in front of the window was Tata, the female parrot, who had

flown out of her cage and perched herself on her stand, where she

remained, dazzled and enraptured, amidst the dancing dust of a broad

yellow sunray. In her astonishment however, at seeing so many people

enter, she had ceased to scream and smooth her feathers, and had turned

her head the better to examine the newcomers with her round and

scrutinising eye.

The minutes went by slowly amidst all the feverish anxiety as to what

might be occurring in the neighbouring room. Don Vigilio had taken a

corner seat in silence, whilst Benedetta and Pierre, who had remained

standing, preserved similar muteness, and immobility. But the Cardinal

had reverted to that instinctive, lulling tramp by which he apparently

hoped to quiet his impatience and arrive the sooner at the explanation

for which he was groping through a tumultuous maze of ideas. And whilst

his rhythmical footsteps resounded with mechanical regularity, dark fury

was taking possession of his mind, exasperation at being unable to

understand the why and wherefore of that sickness. As he passed the table

he had twice glanced at the things lying on it in confusion, as if

seeking some explanation from them. Perhaps the harm had been done by

that unfinished coffee, or by that bread whose crumbs lay here and there,

or by those cutlets, a bone of which remained? Then as for the third time

he passed by, again glancing, his eyes fell upon the basket of figs, and

at once he stopped, as if beneath the shock of a revelation. An idea

seized upon him and mastered him, without any plan, however, occurring to

him by which he might change his sudden suspicion into certainty. For a

moment he remained puzzled with his eyes fixed upon the basket. Then he

took a fig and examined it, but, noticing nothing strange, was about to

put it back when Tata, the parrot, who was very fond of figs, raised a

strident cry. And this was like a ray of light; the means of changing

suspicion into certainty was found.

Slowly, with grave air and gloomy visage, the Cardinal carried the fig to

the parrot and gave it to her without hesitation or regret. She was a

very pretty bird, the only being of the lower order of creation to which

he had ever really been attached. Stretching out her supple, delicate

form, whose silken feathers of dull green here and there assumed a pinky

tinge in the sunlight, she took hold of the fig with her claws, then

ripped it open with her beak. But when she had raked it she ate but

little, and let all the rest fall upon the floor. Still grave and

impassible, the Cardinal looked at her and waited. Quite three minutes

went by, and then feeling reassured, he began to scratch the bird’s poll,

whilst she, taking pleasure in the caress, turned her neck and fixed her

bright ruby eye upon her master. But all at once she sank back without

even a flap of the wings, and fell like a bullet. She was dead, killed as

by a thunderbolt.

Boccanera made but a gesture, raising both hands to heaven as if in

horror at what he now knew. Great God! such a terrible crime, and such a

fearful mistake, such an abominable trick of Destiny! No cry of grief

came from him, but the gloom upon his face grew black and fierce. Yet

there was a cry, a piercing cry from Benedetta, who like Pierre and Don

Vigilio had watched the Cardinal with an astonishment which had changed

into terror: “Poison! poison! Ah! Dario, my heart, my soul!”

But the Cardinal violently caught his niece by the wrist, whilst darting

a suspicious glance at the two petty priests, the secretary and the

foreigner, who were present: “Be quiet, be quiet!” said he.

She shook herself free, rebelling, frantic with rage and hatred: “Why

should I be quiet!” she cried. “It is Prada’s work, I shall denounce him,

he shall die as well! I tell you it is Prada, I know it, for yesterday

Abbe Froment came back with him from Frascati in his carriage with that

priest Santobono and that basket of figs! Yes, yes, I have witnesses, it

is Prada, Prada!”

“No, no, you are mad, be quiet!” said the Cardinal, who had again taken

hold of the young woman’s hands and sought to master her with all his

sovereign authority. He, who knew the influence which Cardinal

Sanguinetti exercised over Santobono’s excitable mind, had just

understood the whole affair; no direct complicity but covert propulsion,

the animal excited and then let loose upon the troublesome rival at the

moment when the pontifical throne seemed likely to be vacant. The

probability, the certainty of all this flashed upon Boccanera who, though

some points remained obscure, did not seek to penetrate them. It was not

necessary indeed that he should know every particular: the thing was as

he said, since it was bound to be so. “No, no, it was not Prada,” he

exclaimed, addressing Benedetta. “That man can bear me no personal

grudge, and I alone was aimed at, it was to me that those figs were

given. Come, think it out! Only an unforeseen indisposition prevented me

from eating the greater part of the fruit, for it is known that I am very

fond of figs, and while my poor Dario was tasting them, I jested and told

him to leave the finer ones for me to-morrow. Yes, the abominable blow

was meant for me, and it is on him that it has fallen by the most

atrocious of chances, the most monstrous of the follies of fate. Ah! Lord

God, Lord God, have you then forsaken us!”

Tears came into the old man’s eyes, whilst she still quivered and seemed

unconvinced: “But you have no enemies, uncle,” she said. “Why should that

Santobono try to take your life?”

For a moment he found no fitting reply. With supreme grandeur he had

already resolved to keep the truth secret. Then a recollection came to

him, and he resigned himself to the telling of a lie: “Santobono’s mind

has always been somewhat unhinged,” said he, “and I know that he has

hated me ever since I refused to help him to get a brother of his, one of

our former gardeners, out of prison. Deadly spite often has no more

serious cause. He must have thought that he had reason to be revenged on

me.”

Thereupon Benedetta, exhausted, unable to argue any further, sank upon a

chair with a despairing gesture: “Ah! God, God! I no longer know--and

what matters it now that my Dario is in such danger? There’s only one

thing to be done, he must be saved. How long they are over what they are

doing in that room--why does not Victorine come for us!”

The silence again fell, full of terror. Without speaking the Cardinal

took the basket of figs from the table and carried it to a cupboard in

which he locked it. Then he put the key in his pocket. No doubt, when

night had fallen, he himself would throw the proofs of the crime into the

Tiber. However, on coming back from the cupboard he noticed the two

priests, who naturally had watched him; and with mingled grandeur and

simplicity he said to them: “Gentlemen, I need not ask you to be

discreet. There are scandals which we must spare the Church, which is

not, cannot be guilty. To deliver one of ourselves, even when he is a

criminal, to the civil tribunals, often means a blow for the whole

Church, for men of evil mind may lay hold of the affair and seek to

impute the responsibility of the crime even to the Church itself. We

therefore have but to commit the murderer to the hands of God, who will

know more surely how to punish him. Ah! for my part, whether I be struck

in my own person or whether the blow be directed against my family, my

dearest affections, I declare in the name of the Christ who died upon the

cross, that I feel neither anger, nor desire for vengeance, that I efface

the murderer’s name from my memory and bury his abominable act in the

eternal silence of the grave.”

Tall as he was, he seemed of yet loftier stature whilst with hand

upraised he took that oath to leave his enemies to the justice of God

alone; for he did not refer merely to Santobono, but to Cardinal

Sanguinetti, whose evil influence he had divined. And amidst all the

heroism of his pride, he was rent by tragic dolour at thought of the dark

battle which was waged around the tiara, all the evil hatred and

voracious appetite which stirred in the depths of the gloom. Then, as

Pierre and Don Vigilio bowed to him as a sign that they would preserve

silence, he almost choked with invincible emotion, a sob of loving grief

which he strove to keep down rising to his throat, whilst he stammered:

“Ah! my poor child, my poor child, the only scion of our race, the only

love and hope of my heart! Ah! to die, to die like this!”

But Benedetta, again all violence, sprang up: “Die! Who, Dario? I won’t

have it! We’ll nurse him, we’ll go back to him. We will take him in our

arms and save him. Come, uncle, come at once! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t

have him die!”

She was going towards the door, and nothing would have prevented her from

re-entering the bed-room, when, as it happened, Victorine appeared with a

wild look on her face, for, despite her wonted serenity, all her courage

was now exhausted. “The doctor begs madame and his Eminence to come at

once, at once,” said she.

Stupefied by all these things, Pierre did not follow the others, but

lingered for a moment in the sunlit dining-room with Don Vigilio. What!

poison? Poison as in the time of the Borgias, elegantly hidden away,

served up with luscious fruit by a crafty traitor, whom one dared not

even denounce! And he recalled the conversation on his way back from

Frascati, and his Parisian scepticism with respect to those legendary

drugs, which to his mind had no place save in the fifth acts of

melodramas. Yet those abominable stories were true, those tales of

poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being

suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in

their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a

poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now

illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition

and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness

to act in presence of the probable death of the reigning pope, the

suggestion of a crime for the sake of the Church’s salvation, then that

priest with his little basket of figs encountered on the road, then that

basket carried for hours so carefully, so devoutly, on the priest’s

knees, that basket which now haunted Pierre like a nightmare, and whose

colour, and odour, and shape he would ever recall with a shudder. Aye,

poison, poison, there was truth in it; it existed and still circulated in

the depths of the black world, amidst all the ravenous, rival longings

for conquest and sovereignty.

And all at once the figure of Prada likewise arose in Pierre’s mind. A

little while previously, when Benedetta had so violently accused the

Count, he, Pierre, had stepped forward to defend him and cry aloud what

he knew, whence the poison had come, and what hand had offered it. But a

sudden thought had made him shiver: though Prada had not devised the

crime, he had allowed it to be perpetrated. Another memory darted keen

like steel through the young priest’s mind--that of the little black hen

lying lifeless beside the shed, amidst the dismal surroundings of the

_osteria_, with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.

And here again, Tata, the parrot, lay still soft and warm at the foot of

her stand, with her beak stained by oozing blood. Why had Prada told that

lie about a battle between two fowls? All the dim intricacy of passion

and contention bewildered Pierre, he could not thread his way through it;

nor was he better able to follow the frightful combat which must have

been waged in that man’s mind during the night of the ball. At the same

time he could not again picture him by his side during their nocturnal

walk towards the Boccanera mansion without shuddering, dimly divining

what a frightful decision had been taken before that mansion’s door.

Moreover, whatever the obscurities, whether Prada had expected that the

Cardinal alone would be killed, or had hoped that some chance stroke of

fate might avenge him on others, the terrible fact remained--he had

known, he had been able to stay Destiny on the march, but had allowed it

to go onward and blindly accomplish its work of death.

Turning his head Pierre perceived Don Vigilio still seated on the corner

chair whence he had not stirred, and looking so pale and haggard that

perhaps he also had swallowed some of the poison. “Do you feel unwell?”

the young priest asked.

At first the secretary could not reply, for terror had gripped him at the

throat. Then in a low voice he said: “No, no, I didn’t eat any. Ah,

Heaven, when I think that I so much wanted to taste them, and that merely

deference kept me back on seeing that his Eminence did not take any!” Don

Vigilio’s whole body shivered at the thought that his humility alone had

saved him; and on his face and his hands there remained the icy chill of

death which had fallen so near and grazed him as it passed.

Then twice he heaved a sigh, and with a gesture of affright sought to

brush the horrid thing away while murmuring: “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!”

Pierre, deeply stirred, and knowing what he thought of the train-bearer,

tried to extract some information from him: “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Do you accuse him too? Do you think they urged him on, and that it was

they at bottom?”

The word Jesuits was not even spoken, but a big black shadow passed

athwart the gay sunlight of the dining-room, and for a moment seemed to

fill it with darkness. “They! ah yes!” exclaimed Don Vigilio, “they are

everywhere; it is always they! As soon as one weeps, as soon as one dies,

they are mixed up in it. And this is intended for me too; I am quite

surprised that I haven’t been carried off.” Then again he raised a dull

moan of fear, hatred, and anger: “Ah! Paparelli, Paparelli!” And he

refused to reply any further, but darted scared glances at the walls as

if from one or another of them he expected to see the train-bearer

emerge, with his wrinkled flabby face like that of an old maid, his

furtive mouse-like trot, and his mysterious, invading hands which had

gone expressly to bring the forgotten figs from the pantry and deposit

them on the table.

At last the two priests decided to return to the bedroom, where perhaps

they might be required; and Pierre on entering was overcome by the

heart-rending scene which the chamber now presented. Doctor Giordano,

suspecting poison, had for half an hour been trying the usual remedies,

an emetic and then magnesia. Just then, too, he had made Victorine whip

some whites of eggs in water. But the disorder was progressing with such

lightning-like rapidity that all succour was becoming futile. Undressed

and lying on his back, his bust propped up by pillows and his arms lying

outstretched over the sheets, Dario looked quite frightful in the sort of

painful intoxication which characterised that redoubtable and mysterious

disorder to which already Monsignor Gallo and others had succumbed. The

young man seemed to be stricken with a sort of dizzy stupor, his eyes

receded farther and farther into the depth of their dark sockets, whilst

his whole face became withered, aged as it were, and covered with an

earthy pallor. A moment previously he had closed his eyes, and the only

sign that he still lived was the heaving of his chest induced by painful

respiration. And leaning over his poor dying face stood Benedetta,

sharing his sufferings, and mastered by such impotent grief that she also

was unrecognisable, so white, so distracted by anguish, that it seemed as

if death were gradually taking her at the same time as it was taking him.

In the recess by the window whither Cardinal Boccanera had led Doctor

Giordano, a few words were exchanged in low tones. “He is lost, is he

not?”

The doctor made the despairing gesture of one who is vanquished: “Alas!

yes. I must warn your Eminence that in an hour all will be over.”

A short interval of silence followed. “And the same malady as Gallo, is

it not?” asked the Cardinal; and as the doctor trembling and averting his

eyes did not answer he added: “At all events of an infectious fever!”

Giordano well understood what the Cardinal thus asked of him: silence,

the crime for ever hidden away for the sake of the good renown of his

mother, the Church. And there could be no loftier, no more tragical

grandeur than that of this old man of seventy, still so erect and

sovereign, who would neither suffer a slur to be cast upon his spiritual

family, nor consent to his human family being dragged into the inevitable

mire of a sensational murder trial. No, no, there must be none of that,

there must be silence, the eternal silence in which all becomes

forgotten.

At last the doctor bowed with his gentle air of discretion. “Evidently,

of an infectious fever as your Eminence so well says,” he replied.

Two big tears then again appeared in Boccanera’s eyes. Now that he had

screened the Deity from attack in the person of the Church, his heart as

a man again bled. He begged the doctor to make a supreme effort, to

attempt the impossible; but, pointing to the dying man with trembling

hands, Giordano shook his head. For his own father, his own mother he

could have done nothing. Death was there. So why weary, why torture a

dying man, whose sufferings he would only have increased? And then, as

the Cardinal, finding the end so near at hand, thought of his sister

Serafina, and lamented that she would not be able to kiss her nephew for

the last time if she lingered at the Vatican, the doctor offered to fetch

her in his carriage which was waiting below. It would not take him more

than twenty minutes, said he, and he would be back in time for the end,

should he then be needed.

Left to himself in the window recess the Cardinal remained there

motionless for another moment. With eyes blurred by tears, he gazed

towards heaven. And his quivering arms were suddenly raised in a gesture

of ardent entreaty. O God, since the science of man was so limited and

vain, since that doctor had gone off happy to escape the embarrassment of

his impotence, O God, why not a miracle which should proclaim the

splendour of Thy Almighty Power! A miracle, a miracle! that was what the

Cardinal asked from the depths of his believing soul, with the

insistence, the imperious entreaty of a Prince of the Earth, who deemed

that he had rendered considerable services to Heaven by dedicating his

whole life to the Church. And he asked for that miracle in order that his

race might be perpetuated, in order that its last male scion might not

thus miserably perish, but be able to marry that fondly loved cousin, who

now stood there all woe and tears. A miracle, a miracle for the sake of

those two dear children! A miracle which would endow the family with

fresh life: a miracle which would eternise the glorious name of Boccanera

by enabling an innumerable posterity of valiant ones and faithful ones to

spring from that young couple!

When the Cardinal returned to the centre of the room he seemed

transfigured. Faith had dried his eyes, his soul had become strong and

submissive, exempt from all human weakness. He had placed himself in the

hands of God, and had resolved that he himself would administer extreme

unction to Dario. With a gesture he summoned Don Vigilio and led him into

the little room which served as a chapel, and the key of which he always

carried. A cupboard had been contrived behind the altar of painted wood,

and the Cardinal went to it to take both stole and surplice. The coffer

containing the Holy Oils was likewise there, a very ancient silver coffer

bearing the Boccanera arms. And on Don Vigilio following the Cardinal

back into the bed-room they in turn pronounced the Latin words:

“_Pax huic domui_.”

“_Et omnibus habitantibus in ea_.” *

* “Peace unto this house and unto all who dwell in it.”--Trans.

Death was coming so fast and threatening, that all the usual preparations

were perforce dispensed with. Neither the two lighted tapers, nor the

little table covered with white cloth had been provided. And, in the same

way, Don Vigilio the assistant, having failed to bring the Holy Water

basin and sprinkler, the Cardinal, as officiating priest, could merely

make the gesture of blessing the room and the dying man, whilst

pronouncing the words of the ritual: “_Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et

mundabor; lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor._“*

* “Sprinkle me, Lord, with hyssop, and purify me; wash me, and

make me whiter than snow.”--Trans.

Benedetta on seeing the Cardinal appear carrying the Holy Oils, had with

a long quiver fallen on her knees at the foot of the bed, whilst,

somewhat farther away, Pierre and Victorine likewise knelt, overcome by

the dolorous grandeur of the scene. And the dilated eyes of the

Contessina, whose face was pale as snow, never quitted her Dario, whom

she no longer recognised, so earthy was his face, its skin tanned and

wrinkled like that of an old man. And it was not for their marriage which

he so much desired that their uncle, the all-powerful Prince of the

Church, was bringing the Sacrament, but for the supreme rupture, the end

of all pride, Death which finishes off the haughtiest races, and sweeps

them away, even as the wind sweeps the dust of the roads.

It was needful that there should be no delay, so the Cardinal promptly

repeated the Credo in an undertone, “_Credo in unum Deum--_”

“_Amen_,” responded Don Vigilio, who, after the prayers of the ritual,

stammered the Litanies in order that Heaven might take pity on the

wretched man who was about to appear before God, if God by a prodigy did

not spare him.

Then, without taking time to wash his fingers, the Cardinal opened the

case containing the Holy Oils, and limiting himself to one anointment, as

is permissible in pressing cases, he deposited a single drop of the oil

on Dario’s parched mouth which was already withered by death. And in

doing so he repeated the words of the formula, his heart all aglow with

faith as he asked that the divine mercy might efface each and every sin

that the young man had committed by either of his five senses, those five

portals by which everlasting temptation assails the soul. And the

Cardinal’s fervour was also instinct with the hope that if God had

smitten the poor sufferer for his offences, perhaps He would make His

indulgence entire and even restore him to life as soon as He should have

forgiven his sins. Life, O Lord, life in order that the ancient line of

the Boccaneras might yet multiply and continue to serve Thee in battle

and at the altar until the end of time!

For a moment the Cardinal remained with quivering hands, gazing at the

mute face, the closed eyes of the dying man, and waiting for the miracle.

But no sign appeared, not the faintest glimmer brightened that haggard

countenance, nor did a sigh of relief come from the withered lips as Don

Vigilio wiped them with a little cotton wool. And the last prayer was

said, and whilst the frightful silence fell once more the Cardinal,

followed by his assistant, returned to the chapel. There they both knelt,

the Cardinal plunging into ardent prayer upon the bare tiles. With his

eyes raised to the brass crucifix upon the altar he saw nothing, heard

nothing, but gave himself wholly to his entreaties, supplicating God to

take him in place of his nephew, if a sacrifice were necessary, and yet

clinging to the hope that so long as Dario retained a breath of life and

he himself thus remained on his knees addressing the Deity, he might

succeed in pacifying the wrath of Heaven. He was both so humble and so

great. Would not accord surely be established between God and a

Boccanera? The old palace might have fallen to the ground, he himself

would not even have felt the toppling of its beams.

In the bed-room, however, nothing had yet stirred beneath the weight of

tragic majesty which the ceremony had left there. It was only now that

Dario raised his eyelids, and when on looking at his hands he saw them so

aged and wasted the depths of his eyes kindled with an expression of

immense regretfulness that life should be departing. Doubtless it was at

this moment of lucidity amidst the kind of intoxication with which the

poison overwhelmed him, that he for the first time realised his perilous

condition. Ah! to die, amidst such pain, such physical degradation, what

a revolting horror for that frivolous and egotistical man, that lover of

beauty, joy, and light, who knew not how to suffer! In him ferocious fate

chastised racial degeneracy with too heavy a hand. He became horrified

with himself, seized with childish despair and terror, which lent him

strength enough to sit up and gaze wildly about the room, in order to see

if every one had not abandoned him. And when his eyes lighted on

Benedetta still kneeling at the foot of the bed, a supreme impulse

carried him towards her, he stretched forth both arms as passionately as

his strength allowed and stammered her name: “O Benedetta, Benedetta!”

She, motionless in the stupor of her anxiety, had not taken her eyes from

his face. The horrible disorder which was carrying off her lover, seemed

also to possess and annihilate her more and more, even as he himself grew

weaker and weaker. Her features were assuming an immaterial whiteness;

and through the void of her clear eyeballs one began to espy her soul.

However, when she perceived him thus resuscitating and calling her with

arms outstretched, she in her turn arose and standing beside the bed made

answer: “I am coming, my Dario, here I am.”

And then Pierre and Victorine, still on their knees, beheld a sublime

deed of such extraordinary grandeur that they remained rooted to the

floor, spell-bound as in the presence of some supra-terrestrial spectacle

in which human beings may not intervene. Benedetta herself spoke and

acted like one freed from all social and conventional ties, already

beyond life, only seeing and addressing beings and things from a great

distance, from the depths of the unknown in which she was about to

disappear.

“Ah! my Dario, so an attempt has been made to part us! It was in order

that I might never belong to you--that we might never be happy, that your

death was resolved upon, and it was known that with your life my own must

cease! And it is that man who is killing you! Yes, he is your murderer,

even if the actual blow has been dealt by another. He is the first

cause--he who stole me from you when I was about to become yours, he who

ravaged our lives, and who breathed around us the hateful poison which is

killing us. Ah! how I hate him, how I hate him; how I should like to

crush him with my hate before I die with you!”

She did not raise her voice, but spoke those terrible words in a deep

murmur, simply and passionately. Prada was not even named, and she

scarcely turned towards Pierre--who knelt, paralysed, behind her--to add

with a commanding air: “You will see his father, I charge you to tell him

that I cursed his son! That kind-hearted hero loved me well--I love him

even now, and the words you will carry to him from me will rend his

heart. But I desire that he should know--he must know, for the sake of

truth and justice.”

Distracted by terror, sobbing amidst a last convulsion, Dario again

stretched forth his arms, feeling that she was no longer looking at him,

that her clear eyes were no longer fixed upon his own: “Benedetta,

Benedetta!”

“I am coming, I am coming, my Dario--I am here!” she responded, drawing

yet nearer to the bedside and almost touching him. “Ah!” she went on,

“that vow which I made to the Madonna to belong to none, not even you,

until God should allow it by the blessing of one of his priests! Ah! I

set a noble, a divine pride in remaining immaculate for him who should be

the one master of my soul and body. And that chastity which I was so

proud of, I defended it against the other as one defends oneself against

a wolf, and I defended it against you with tears for fear of sacrilege.

And if you only knew what terrible struggles I was forced to wage with

myself, for I loved you and longed to be yours, like a woman who accepts

the whole of love, the love that makes wife and mother! Ah! my vow to the

Madonna--with what difficulty did I keep it when the old blood of our

race arose in me like a tempest; and now what a disaster!” She drew yet

nearer, and her low voice became more ardent: “You remember that evening

when you came back with a knife-thrust in your shoulder. I thought you

dead, and cried aloud with rage at the idea of losing you like that. I

insulted the Madonna and regretted that I had not damned myself with you

that we might die together, so tightly clasped that we must needs be

buried together also. And to think that such a terrible warning was of no

avail! I was blind and foolish; and now you are again stricken, again

being taken from my love. Ah! my wretched pride, my idiotic dream!”

That which now rang out in her stifled voice was the anger of the

practical woman that she had ever been, all superstition notwithstanding.

Could the Madonna, who was so maternal, desire the woe of lovers? No,

assuredly not. Nor did the angels make the mere absence of a priest a

cause for weeping over the transports of true and mutual love. Was not

such love holy in itself, and did not the angels rather smile upon it and

burst into gladsome song! And ah! how one cheated oneself by not loving

to heart’s content under the sun, when the blood of life coursed through

one’s veins!

“Benedetta! Benedetta!” repeated the dying man, full of child-like terror

at thus going off all alone into the depths of the black and everlasting

night.

“Here I am, my Dario, I am coming!”

Then, as she fancied that the servant, albeit motionless, had stirred, as

if to rise and interfere, she added: “Leave me, leave me, Victorine,

nothing in the world can henceforth prevent it. A moment ago, when I was

on my knees, something roused me and urged me on. I know whither I am

going. And besides, did I not swear on the night of the knife thrust? Did

I not promise to belong to him alone, even in the earth if it were

necessary? I must embrace him, and he will carry me away! We shall be

dead, and we shall be wedded in spite of all, and for ever and for ever!”

She stepped back to the dying man, and touched him: “Here I am, my Dario,

here I am!”

Then came the apogee. Amidst growing exaltation, buoyed up by a blaze of

love, careless of glances, candid like a lily, she divested herself of

her garments and stood forth so white, that neither marble statue, nor

dove, nor snow itself was ever whiter. “Here I am, my Dario, here I am!”

Recoiling almost to the ground as at sight of an apparition, the glorious

flash of a holy vision, Pierre and Victorine gazed at her with dazzled

eyes. The servant had not stirred to prevent this extraordinary action,

seized as she was with that shrinking reverential terror which comes upon

one in presence of the wild, mad deeds of faith and passion. And the

priest, whose limbs were paralysed, felt that something so sublime was

passing that he could only quiver in distraction. And no thought of

impurity came to him on beholding that lily, snowy whiteness. All candour

and all nobility as she was, that virgin shocked him no more than some

sculptured masterpiece of genius.

“Here I am, my Dario, here I am.”

She had lain herself down beside the spouse whom she had chosen, she had

clasped the dying man whose arms only had enough strength left to fold

themselves around her. Death was stealing him from her, but she would go

with him; and again she murmured: “My Dario, here I am.”

And at that moment, against the wall at the head of the bed, Pierre

perceived the escutcheon of the Boccaneras, embroidered in gold and

coloured silks on a groundwork of violet velvet. There was the winged

dragon belching flames, there was the fierce and glowing motto “_Bocca

nera, Alma rossa_” (black mouth, red soul), the mouth darkened by a roar,

the soul flaming like a brazier of faith and love. And behold! all that

old race of passion and violence with its tragic legends had reappeared,

its blood bubbling up afresh to urge that last and adorable daughter of

the line to those terrifying and prodigious nuptials in death. And to

Pierre that escutcheon recalled another memory, that of the portrait of

Cassia Boccanera the _amorosa_ and avengeress who had flung herself into

the Tiber with her brother Ercole and the corpse of her lover Flavio. Was

there not here even with Benedetta the same despairing clasp seeking to

vanquish death, the same savagery in hurling oneself into the abyss with

the corpse of the one’s only love? Benedetta and Cassia were as sisters,

Cassia, who lived anew in the old painting in the _salon_ overhead,

Benedetta who was here dying of her lover’s death, as though she were but

the other’s spirit. Both had the same delicate childish features, the

same mouth of passion, the same large dreamy eyes set in the same round,

practical, and stubborn head.

“My Dario, here I am!”

For a second, which seemed an eternity, they clasped one another, she

neither repelled nor terrified by the disorder which made him so

unrecognisable, but displaying a delirious passion, a holy frenzy as if

to pass beyond life, to penetrate with him into the black Unknown. And

beneath the shock of the felicity at last offered to him he expired, with

his arms yet convulsively wound around her as though indeed to carry her

off. Then, whether from grief or from bliss amidst that embrace of death,

there came such a rush of blood to her heart that the organ burst: she

died on her lover’s neck, both tightly and for ever clasped in one

another’s arms.

There was a faint sigh. Victorine understood and drew near, while Pierre,

also erect, remained quivering with the tearful admiration of one who has

beheld the sublime.

“Look, look!” whispered the servant, “she no longer moves, she no longer

breathes. Ah! my poor child, my poor child, she is dead!”

Then the priest murmured: “Oh! God, how beautiful they are.”

It was true, never had loftier and more resplendent beauty appeared on

the faces of the dead. Dario’s countenance, so lately aged and earthen,

had assumed the pallor and nobility of marble, its features lengthened

and simplified as by a transport of ineffable joy. Benedetta remained

very grave, her lips curved by ardent determination, whilst her whole

face was expressive of dolorous yet infinite beatitude in a setting of

infinite whiteness. Their hair mingled, and their eyes, which had

remained open, continued gazing as into one another’s souls with eternal,

caressing sweetness. They were for ever linked, soaring into immortality

amidst the enchantment of their union, vanquishers of death, radiant with

the rapturous beauty of love, the conqueror, the immortal.

But Victorine’s sobs at last burst forth, mingled with such lamentations

that great confusion followed. Pierre, now quite beside himself, in some

measure failed to understand how it was that the room suddenly became

invaded by terrified people. The Cardinal and Don Vigilio, however, must

have hastened in from the chapel; and at the same moment, no doubt,

Doctor Giordano must have returned with Donna Serafina, for both were now

there, she stupefied by the blows which had thus fallen on the house in

her absence, whilst he, the doctor, displayed the perturbation and

astonishment which comes upon the oldest practitioners when facts seem to

give the lie to their experience. However, he sought an explanation of

Benedetta’s death, and hesitatingly ascribed it to aneurism, or possibly

embolism.

Thereupon Victorine, like a servant whose grief makes her the equal of

her employers, boldly interrupted him: “Ah! Sir,” said she, “they loved

each other too fondly; did not that suffice for them to die together?”

Meantime Donna Serafina, after kissing the poor children on the brow,

desired to close their eyes; but she could not succeed in doing so, for

the lids lifted directly she removed her finger and once more the eyes

began to smile at one another, to exchange in all fixity their loving and

eternal glance. And then as she spoke of parting the bodies, Victorine

again protested: “Oh! madame, oh! madame,” she said, “you would have to

break their arms. Cannot you see that their fingers are almost dug into

one another’s shoulders? No, they can never be parted!”

Thereupon Cardinal Boccanera intervened. God had not granted the miracle;

and he, His minister, was livid, tearless, and full of icy despair. But

he waved his arm with a sovereign gesture of absolution and

sanctification, as if, Prince of the Church that he was, disposing of the

will of Heaven, he consented that the lovers should appear in that

embrace before the supreme tribunal. In presence of such wondrous love,

indeed, profoundly stirred by the sufferings of their lives and the

beauty of their death, he showed a broad and lofty contempt for mundane

proprieties. “Leave them, leave me, my sister,” said he, “do not disturb

their slumber. Let their eyes remain open since they desire to gaze on

one another till the end of time without ever wearying. And let them

sleep in one another’s arms since in their lives they did not sin, and

only locked themselves in that embrace in order that they might be laid

together in the ground.”

And then, again becoming a Roman Prince whose proud blood was yet hot

with old-time deeds of battle and passion, he added: “Two Boccaneras may

well sleep like that; all Rome will admire them and weep for them. Leave

them, leave them together, my sister. God knows them and awaits them!”

All knelt, and the Cardinal himself repeated the prayers for the dead.

Night was coming, increasing gloom stole into the chamber, where two

burning tapers soon shone out like stars.

And then, without knowing how, Pierre again found himself in the little

deserted garden on the bank of the Tiber. Suffocating with fatigue and

grief, he must have come thither for fresh air. Darkness shrouded the

charming nook where the streamlet of water falling from the tragic mask

into the ancient sarcophagus ever sang its shrill and flute-like song;

and the laurel-bush which shaded it, and the bitter box-plants and the

orange-trees skirting the paths now formed but vague masses under the

blue-black sky. Ah! how gay and sweet had that melancholy garden been in

the morning, and what a desolate echo it retained of Benedetta’s winsome

laughter, all that fine delight in coming happiness which now lay prone

upstairs, steeped in the nothingness of things and beings! So dolorous

was the pang which came to Pierre’s heart that he burst into sobs, seated

on the same broken column where she had sat, and encompassed by the same

atmosphere that she had breathed, in which still lingered the perfume of

her presence.

But all at once a distant clock struck six, and the young priest started

on remembering that he was to be received by the Pope that very evening

at nine. Yet three more hours! He had not thought of that interview

during the terrifying catastrophe, and it seemed to him now as if months

and months had gone by, as if the appointment were some very old one

which a man is only able to keep after years of absence, when he has

grown aged and had his heart and brain modified by innumerable

experiences. However, he made an effort and rose to his feet. In three

hours’ time he would go to the Vatican and at last he would see the Pope.