I had settled it in my own mind that we had better make the town of
Fondi, close on the frontier, our headquarters, to begin with, and I
had arranged, with the assistance of the embassy, that the leaden
coffin should follow us so far, securely nailed up in its packing-case.
Besides our passports, we were well furnished with letters of
introduction to the local authorities at most of the important frontier
towns, and, to crown all, we had money enough at our command (thanks to
Monkton’s vast fortune) to make sure of the services of any one whom we
wanted to assist us all along our line of search. These various
resources insured us every facility for action, provided always that we
succeeded in discovering the body of the dead duelist. But, in the very
probable event of our failing to do this, our future prospects—more
especially after the responsibility I had undertaken—were of anything
but an agreeable nature to contemplate. I confess I felt uneasy, almost
hopeless, as we posted, in the dazzling Italian sunshine, along the
road to Fondi.
We made an easy two days’ journey of it; for I had insisted, on
Monkton’s account, that we should travel slowly.
On the first day the excessive agitation of my companion a little
alarmed me; he showed, in many ways, more symptoms of a disordered mind
than I had yet observed in him. On the second day, however, he seemed
to get accustomed to contemplate calmly the new idea of the search on
which we were bent, and, except on one point, he was cheerful and
composed enough. Whenever his dead uncle formed the subject of
conversation, he still persisted—on the strength of the old prophecy,
and under the influence of the apparition which he saw, or thought he
saw always—in asserting that the corpse of Stephen Monkton, wherever it
was, lay yet unburied. On every other topic he deferred to me with the
utmost readiness and docility; on this he maintained his strange
opinion with an obstinacy which set reason and persuasion alike at
defiance.
On the third day we rested at Fondi. The packing-case, with the coffin
in it, reached us, and was deposited in a safe place under lock and
key. We engaged some mules, and found a man to act as guide who knew
the country thoroughly. It occurred to me that we had better begin by
confiding the real object of our journey only to the most trustworthy
people we could find among the better-educated classes. For this reason
we followed, in one respect, the example of the fatal dueling-party, by
starting, early on the morning of the fourth day, with sketch-books and
color-boxes, as if we were only artists in search of the picturesque.
After traveling some hours in a northerly direction within the Roman
frontier, we halted to rest ourselves and our mules at a wild little
village far out of the track of tourists in general.
The only person of the smallest importance in the place was the priest,
and to him I addressed my first inquiries, leaving Monkton to await my
return with the guide. I spoke Italian quite fluently, and correctly
enough for my purpose, and was extremely polite and cautious in
introducing my business, but in spite of all the pains I took, I only
succeeded in frightening and bewildering the poor priest more and more
with every fresh word I said to him. The idea of a dueling-party and a
dead man seemed to scare him out of his senses. He bowed, fidgeted,
cast his eyes up to heaven, and piteously shrugging his shoulders, told
me, with rapid Italian circumlocution, that he had not the faintest
idea of what I was talking about. This was my first failure. I confess
I was weak enough to feel a little dispirited when I rejoined Monkton
and the guide.
After the heat of the day was over we resumed our journey.
About three miles from the village, the road, or rather cart-track,
branched off in two directions. The path to the right, our guide
informed us, led up among the mountains to a convent about six miles
off. If we penetrated beyond the convent we should soon reach the
Neapolitan frontier. The path to the left led far inward on the Roman
territory, and would conduct us to a small town where we could sleep
for the night. Now the Roman territory presented the first and fittest
field for our search, and the convent was always within reach,
supposing we returned to Fondi unsuccessful. Besides, the path to the
left led over the widest part of the country we were starting to
explore, and I was always for vanquishing the greatest difficulty
first; so we decided manfully on turning to the left. The expedition in
which this resolution involved us lasted a whole week, and produced no
results. We discovered absolutely nothing, and returned to our
headquarters at Fondi so completely baffled that we did not know
whither to turn our steps next.
I was made much more uneasy by the effect of our failure on Monkton
than by the failure itself. His resolution appeared to break down
altogether as soon as we began to retrace our steps.
He became first fretful and capricious, then silent and desponding.
Finally, he sank into a lethargy of body and mind that seriously
alarmed me. On the morning after our return to Fondi he showed a
strange tendency to sleep incessantly, which made me suspect the
existence of some physical malady in his brain. The whole day he hardly
exchanged a word with me, and seemed to be never fairly awake. Early
the next morning I went into his room, and found him as silent and
lethargic as ever. His servant, who was with us, informed me that
Alfred had once or twice before exhibited such physical symptoms of
mental exhaustion as we were now observing during his father’s lifetime
at Wincot Abbey. This piece of information made me feel easier, and
left my mind free to return to the consideration of the errand which
had brought us to Fondi.
I resolved to occupy the time until my companion got better in
prosecuting our search by myself. That path to the right hand which led
to the convent had not yet been explored. If I set off to trace it, I
need not be away from Monkton more than one night, and I should at
least be able, on my return, to give him the satisfaction of knowing
that one more uncertainty regarding the place of the duel had been
cleared up. These considerations decided me. I left a message for my
friend in case he asked where I had gone, and set out once more for the
village at which we had halted when starting on our first expedition.
Intending to walk to the convent, I parted company with the guide and
the mules where the track branched off, leaving them to go back to the
village and await my return.
For the first four miles the path gently ascended through an open
country, then became abruptly much steeper, and led me deeper and
deeper among thickets and endless woods. By the time my watch informed
me that I must have nearly walked my appointed distance, the view was
bounded on all sides and the sky was shut out overhead by an impervious
screen of leaves and branches. I still followed my only guide, the
steep path; and in ten minutes, emerging suddenly on a plot of
tolerably clear and level ground, I saw the convent before me.
It was a dark, low, sinister-looking place. Not a sign of life or
movement was visible anywhere about it. Green stains streaked the once
white facade of the chapel in all directions. Moss clustered thick in
every crevice of the heavy scowling wall that surrounded the convent.
Long lank weeds grew out of the fissures of roof and parapet, and,
drooping far downward, waved wearily in and out of the barred dormitory
windows. The very cross opposite the entrance-gate, with a shocking
life-sized figure in wood nailed to it, was so beset at the base with
crawling creatures, and looked so slimy, green, and rotten all the way
up, that I absolutely shrank from it.
A bell-rope with a broken handle hung by the gate. I approached
it—hesitated, I hardly knew why—looked up at the convent again, and
then walked round to the back of the building, partly to gain time to
consider what I had better do next, partly from an unaccountable
curiosity that urged me, strangely to myself, to see all I could of the
outside of the place before I attempted to gain admission at the gate.
At the back of the convent I found an outhouse, built on to the wall—a
clumsy, decayed building, with the greater part of the roof fallen in,
and with a jagged hole in one of its sides, where in all probability a
window had once been. Behind the outhouse the trees grew thicker than
ever. As I looked toward them I could not determine whether the ground
beyond me rose or fell—whether it was grassy, or earthy, or rocky. I
could see nothing but the all-pervading leaves, brambles, ferns, and
long grass.
Not a sound broke the oppressive stillness. No bird’s note rose from
the leafy wilderness around me; no voices spoke in the convent garden
behind the scowling wall; no clock struck in the chapel-tower; no dog
barked in the ruined outhouse. The dead silence deepened the solitude
of the place inexpressibly. I began to feel it weighing on my
spirits—the more, because woods were never favorite places with me to
walk in. The sort of pastoral happiness which poets often represent
when they sing of life in the woods never, to my mind, has half the
charm of life on the mountain or in the plain. When I am in a wood, I
miss the boundless loveliness of the sky, and the delicious softness
that distance gives to the earthly view beneath. I feel oppressively
the change which the free air suffers when it gets imprisoned among
leaves, and I am always awed, rather than pleased, by that mysterious
still light which shines with such a strange dim luster in deep places
among trees. It may convict me of want of taste and absence of due
feeling for the marvelous beauties of vegetation, but I must frankly
own that I never penetrate far into a wood without finding that the
getting out of it again is the pleasantest part of my walk—the getting
out on to the barest down, the wildest hill-side, the bleakest mountain
top—the getting out anywhere, so that I can see the sky over me and the
view before me as far as my eye can reach.
After such a confession as I have now made, it will appear surprising
to no one that I should have felt the strongest possible inclination,
while I stood by the ruined outhouse, to retrace my steps at once, and
make the best of my way out of the wood. I had, indeed, actually turned
to depart, when the remembrance of the errand which had brought me to
the convent suddenly stayed my feet. It seemed doubtful whether I
should be admitted into the building if I rang the bell; and more than
doubtful, if I were let in, whether the inhabitants would be able to
afford me any clew to the information of which I was in search.
However, it was my duty to Monkton to leave no means of helping him in
his desperate object untried; so I resolved to go round to the front of
the convent again, and ring at the gate-bell at all hazards.
By the merest chance I looked up as I passed the side of the outhouse
where the jagged hole was, and noticed that it was pierced rather high
in the wall.
As I stopped to observe this, the closeness of the atmosphere in the
wood seemed to be affecting me more unpleasantly than ever.
I waited a minute and untied my cravat.
Closeness? surely it was something more than that. The air was even
more distasteful to my nostrils than to my lungs. There was some faint,
indescribable smell loading it—some smell of which I had never had any
previous experience—some smell which I thought (now that my attention
was directed to it) grew more and more certainly traceable to its
source the nearer I advanced to the outhouse.
By the time I had tried the experiment two or three times, and had made
myself sure of this fact, my curiosity became excited. There were
plenty of fragments of stone and brick lying about me. I gathered some
of them together, and piled them up below the hole, then mounted to the
top, and, feeling rather ashamed of what I was doing, peeped into the
outhouse.
The sight of horror that met my eyes the instant I looked through the
hole is as present to my memory now as if I had beheld it yesterday. I
can hardly write of it at this distance of time without a thrill of the
old terror running through me again to the heart.
The first impression conveyed to me, as I looked in, was of a long,
recumbent object, tinged with a lightish blue color all over, extended
on trestles, and bearing a certain hideous, half-formed resemblance to
the human face and figure. I looked again, and felt certain of it.
There were the prominences of the forehead, nose, and chin, dimly shown
as under a veil—there, the round outline of the chest and the hollow
below it—there, the points of the knees, and the stiff, ghastly,
upturned feet. I looked again, yet more attentively. My eyes got
accustomed to the dim light streaming in through the broken roof, and I
satisfied myself, judging by the great length of the body from head to
foot, that I was looking at the corpse of a man—a corpse that had
apparently once had a sheet spread over it, and that had lain rotting
on the trestles under the open sky long enough for the linen to take
the livid, light-blue tinge of mildew and decay which now covered it.
How long I remained with my eyes fixed on that dread sight of death, on
that tombless, terrible wreck of humanity, poisoning the still air, and
seeming even to stain the faint descending light that disclosed it, I
know not. I remember a dull, distant sound among the trees, as if the
breeze were rising—the slow creeping on of the sound to near the place
where I stood—the noiseless whirling fall of a dead leaf on the corpse
below me, through the gap in the outhouse roof—and the effect of
awakening my energies, of relaxing the heavy strain on my mind, which
even the slight change wrought in the scene I beheld by the falling
leaf produced in me immediately. I descended to the ground, and,
sitting down on the heap of stones, wiped away the thick perspiration
which covered my face, and which I now became aware of for the first
time. It was something more than the hideous spectacle unexpectedly
offered to my eyes which had shaken my nerves as I felt that they were
shaken now. Monkton’s prediction that, if we succeeded in discovering
his uncle’s body, we should find it unburied, recurred to me the
instant I saw the trestles and their ghastly burden. I felt assured on
the instant that I had found the dead man—the old prophecy recurred to
my memory—a strange yearning sorrow, a vague foreboding of ill, an
inexplicable terror, as I thought of the poor lad who was awaiting my
return in the distant town, struck through me with a chill of
superstitious dread, robbed me of my judgment and resolution, and left
me when I had at last recovered myself, weak and dizzy, as if I had
just suffered under some pang of overpowering physical pain.
I hastened round to the convent gate and rang impatiently at the
bell—waited a little while and rang again—then heard footsteps.
In the middle of the gate, just opposite my face, there was a small
sliding panel, not more than a few inches long; this was presently
pushed aside from within. I saw, through a bit of iron grating, two
dull, light gray eyes staring vacantly at me, and heard a feeble husky
voice saying:
“What may you please to want?’
“I am a traveler—” I began.
“We live in a miserable place. We have nothing to show travelers here.”
“I don’t come to see anything. I have an important question to ask,
which I believe some one in this convent will be able to answer. If you
are not willing to let me in, at least come out and speak to me here.”
“Are you alone?”
“Quite alone.”
“Are there no women with you?”
“None.”
The gate was slowly unbarred, and an old Capuchin, very infirm, very
suspicious, and very dirty, stood before me. I was far too excited and
impatient to waste any time in prefatory phrases; so, telling the monk
at once how I had looked through the hole in the outhouse, and what I
had seen inside, I asked him, in plain terms, who the man had been
whose corpse I had beheld, and why the body was left unburied?
The old Capuchin listened to me with watery eyes that twinkled
suspiciously. He had a battered tin snuff-box in his hand, and his
finger and thumb slowly chased a few scattered grains of snuff round
and round the inside of the box all the time I was speaking. When I had
done, he shook his head and said: “That was certainly an ugly sight in
their outhouse; one of the ugliest sights, he felt sure, that ever I
had seen in all my life!”
“I don’t want to talk of the sight,” I rejoined, impatiently; “I want
to know who the man was, how he died, and why he is not decently
buried. Can you tell me?”
The monk’s finger and thumb having captured three or four grains of
snuff at last, he slowly drew them into his nostrils, holding the box
open under his nose the while, to prevent the possibility of wasting
even one grain, sniffed once or twice luxuriously—closed the box—then
looked at me again with his eyes watering and twinkling more
suspiciously than before.
“Yes,” said the monk, “that’s an ugly sight in our outhouse—a very ugly
sight, certainly!”
I never had more difficulty in keeping my temper in my life than at
that moment. I succeeded, however, in repressing a very disrespectful
expression on the subject of monks in general, which was on the tip of
my tongue, and made another attempt to conquer the old man’s
exasperating reserve. Fortunately for my chances of succeeding with
him, I was a snuff-taker myself, and I had a box full of excellent
English snuff in my pocket, which I now produced as a bribe. It was my
last resource.
“I thought your box seemed empty just now,” said I; “will you try a
pinch out of mine?”
The offer was accepted with an almost youthful alacrity of gesture. The
Capuchin took the largest pinch I ever saw held between any man’s
finger and thumb—inhaled it slowly without spilling a single grain—half
closed his eyes—and, wagging his head gently, patted me paternally on
the back.
“Oh, my son,” said the monk, “what delectable snuff! Oh, my son and
amiable traveler, give the spiritual father who loves you yet another
tiny, tiny pinch!”
“Let me fill your box for you. I shall have plenty left for myself.”
The battered tin snuff-box was given to me before I had done speaking;
the paternal hand patted my back more approvingly than ever; the
feeble, husky voice grew glib and eloquent in my praise. I had
evidently found out the weak side of the old Capuchin, and, on
returning him his box, I took instant advantage of the discovery.
“Excuse my troubling you on the subject again,” I said, “but I have
particular reasons for wanting to hear all that you can tell me in
explanation of that horrible sight in the outhouse.”
“Come in,” answered the monk.
He drew me inside the gate, closed it, and then leading the way across
a grass-grown courtyard, looking out on a weedy kitchen-garden, showed
me into a long room with a low ceiling, a dirty dresser, a few
rudely-carved stall seats, and one or two grim, mildewed pictures for
ornaments. This was the sacristy.
“There’s nobody here, and it’s nice and cool,” said the old Capuchin.
It was so damp that I actually shivered. “Would you like to see the
church?” said the monk; “a jewel of a church, if we could keep it in
repair; but we can’t. Ah! malediction and misery, we are too poor to
keep our church in repair!”
Here he shook his head and began fumbling with a large bunch of keys.
“Never mind the church now,” said I. “Can you, or can you not, tell me
what I want to know?”
“Everything, from beginning to end—absolutely everything. Why, I
answered the gate-bell—I always answer the gate-bell here,” said the
Capuchin.
“What, in Heaven’s name, has the gate-bell to do with the unburied
corpse in your house?”
“Listen, son of mine, and you shall know. Some time ago—some months—ah!
me, I’m old; I’ve lost my memory; I don’t know how many months—ah!
miserable me, what a very old, old monk I am!” Here he comforted
himself with another pinch of snuff.
“Never mind the exact time,” said I. “I don’t care about that.”
“Good,” said the Capuchin. “Now I can go on. Well, let us say it is
some months ago—we in this convent are all at breakfast—wretched,
wretched breakfasts, son of mine, in this convent!—we are at breakfast,
and we hear _bang! bang!_ twice over. ‘Guns,’ says I. ‘What are they
shooting for?’ says Brother Jeremy. ‘Game,’ says Brother Vincent. ‘Aha!
game,’ says Brother Jeremy. ‘If I hear more, I shall send out and
discover what it means,’ says the father superior. We hear no more, and
we go on with our wretched breakfasts.”
“Where did the report of firearms come from?” I inquired.
“From down below—beyond the big trees at the back of the convent, where
there’s some clear ground—nice ground, if it wasn’t for the pools and
puddles. But, ah! misery, how damp we are in these parts! how very,
very damp!”
“Well, what happened after the report of firearms?”
“You shall hear. We are still at breakfast, all silent—for what have we
to talk about here? What have we but our devotions, our kitchen-garden,
and our wretched, wretched bits of breakfasts and dinners? I say we are
all silent, when there comes suddenly such a ring at the bell as never
was heard before—a very devil of a ring—a ring that caught us all with
our bits—our wretched, wretched bits!—in our mouths, and stopped us
before we could swallow them. ‘Go, brother of mine,’ says the father
superior to me, ‘go; it is your duty—go to the gate.’ I am brave—a very
lion of a Capuchin. I slip out on tiptoe—I wait—I listen—I pull back
our little shutter in the gate—I wait, I listen again—I peep through
the hole—nothing, absolutely nothing that I can see. I am brave—I am
not to be daunted. What do I do next? I open the gate. Ah! sacred
Mother of Heaven, what do I behold lying all along our threshold? A
man—dead!—a big man; bigger than you, bigger than me, bigger than
anybody in this convent—buttoned up tight in a fine coat, with black
eyes, staring, staring up at the sky, and blood soaking through and
through the front of his shirt. What do I do? I scream once—I scream
twice—and run back to the father superior!”
All the particulars of the fatal duel which I had gleaned from the
French newspaper in Monkton’s room at Naples recurred vividly to my
memory. The suspicion that I had felt when I looked into the outhouse
became a certainty as I listened to the old monk’s last words.
“So far I understand,” said I. “The corpse I have just seen in the
outhouse is the corpse of the man whom you found dead outside your
gate. Now tell me why you have not given the remains decent burial.”
“Wait—wait—wait,” answered the Capuchin. “The father superior hears me
scream and comes out; we all run together to the gate; we lift up the
big man and look at him close. Dead! dead as this (smacking the dresser
with his hand). We look again, and see a bit of paper pinned to the
collar of his coat. Aha! son of mine, you start at that. I thought I
should make you start at last.”
I had started, indeed. That paper was doubtless the leaf mentioned in
the second’s unfinished narrative as having been torn out of his
pocketbook, and inscribed with the statement of how the dead man had
lost his life. If proof positive were wanted to identify the dead body,
here was such proof found.
“What do you think was written on the bit of paper?” continued the
Capuchin “We read and shudder. This dead man has been killed in a
duel—he, the desperate, the miserable, has died in the commission of
mortal sin; and the men who saw the killing of him ask us Capuchins,
holy men, servants of Heaven, children of our lord the Pope—they ask
_us_ to give him burial! Oh! but we are outraged when we read that; we
groan, we wring our hands, we turn away, we tear our beards, we—”
“Wait one moment,” said I, seeing that the old man was heating himself
with his narrative, and was likely, unless I stopped him, to talk more
and more fluently to less and less purpose—“wait a moment. Have you
preserved the paper that was pinned to the dead man’s coat; and can I
look at it?”
The Capuchin seemed on the point of giving me an answer, when he
suddenly checked himself. I saw his eyes wander away from my face, and
at the same moment heard a door softly opened and closed again behind
me.
Looking round immediately, I observed another monk in the sacristy—a
tall, lean, black-bearded man, in whose presence my old friend with the
snuff-box suddenly became quite decorous and devotional to look at. I
suspected I was in the presence of the father superior, and I found
that I was right the moment he addressed me.
“I am the father superior of this convent,” he said, in quiet, clear
tones, and looking me straight in the face while he spoke, with coldly
attentive eyes. “I have heard the latter part of your conversation, and
I wish to know why you are so particularly anxious to see the piece of
paper that was pinned to the dead man’s coat?”
The coolness with which he avowed that he had been listening, and the
quietly imperative manner in which he put his concluding question,
perplexed and startled me. I hardly knew at first what tone I ought to
take in answering him. He observed my hesitation, and attributing it to
the wrong cause, signed to the old Capuchin to retire. Humbly stroking
his long gray beard, and furtively consoling himself with a private
pinch of the “delectable snuff,” my venerable friend shuffled out of
the room, making a profound obeisance at the door just before he
disappeared.
“Now,” said the father superior, as coldly as ever, “I am waiting, sir,
for your reply.”
“You shall have it in the fewest possible words,” said I, answering him
in his own tone. “I find, to my disgust and horror, that there is an
unburied corpse in an outhouse attached to your convent. I believe that
corpse to be the body of an English gentleman of rank and fortune, who
was killed in a duel. I have come into this neighborhood with the
nephew and only relation of the slain man, for the express purpose of
recovering his remains; and I wish to see the paper found on the body,
because I believe that paper will identify it to the satisfaction of
the relative to whom I have referred. Do you find my reply sufficiently
straightforward? And do you mean to give me permission to look at the
paper?”
“I am satisfied with your reply, and see no reason for refusing you a
sight of the paper,” said the father superior; “but I have something to
say first. In speaking of the impression produced on you by beholding
the corpse, you used the words ‘disgust’ and ‘horror.’ This license of
expression in relation to what you have seen in the precincts of a
convent proves to me that you are out of the pale of the Holy Catholic
Church. You have no right, therefore, to expect any explanation; but I
will give you one, nevertheless, as a favor. The slain man died,
unabsolved, in the commission of mortal sin. We infer so much from the
paper which we found on his body; and we know, by the evidence of our
own eyes and ears, that he was killed on the territories of the Church,
and in the act of committing direct violation of those special laws
against the crime of dueling, the strict enforcement of which the holy
father himself has urged on the faithful throughout his dominions by
letters signed with his own hand. Inside this convent the ground is
consecrated, and we Catholics are not accustomed to bury the outlaws of
our religion, the enemies of our holy father, and the violators of our
most sacred laws in consecrated ground. Outside this convent we have no
rights and no power; and, if we had both, we should remember that we
are monks, not grave-diggers, and that the only burial with which _we_
can have any concern is burial with the prayers of the Church. That is
all the explanation I think it necessary to give. Wait for me here, and
you shall see the paper.” With those words the father superior left the
room as quietly as he had entered it.
I had hardly time to think over this bitter and ungracious explanation,
and to feel a little piqued by the language and manner of the person
who had given it to me, before the father superior returned with the
paper in his hand. He placed it before me on the dresser, and I read,
hurriedly traced in pencil, the following lines:
“This paper is attached to the body of the late Mr. Stephen Monkton, an
Englishman of distinction. He has been shot in a duel, conducted with
perfect gallantry and honor on both sides. His body is placed at the
door of this convent, to receive burial at the hands of its inmates,
the survivors of the encounter being obliged to separate and secure
their safety by immediate flight. I, the second of the slain man, and
the writer of this explanation, certify, on my word of honor as a
gentleman that the shot which killed my principal on the instant was
fired fairly, in the strictest accordance with the rules laid down
beforehand for the conduct of the duel.
“(Signed), F.”
“F.” I recognized easily enough as the initial letter of Monsieur
Foulon’s name, the second of Mr. Monkton, who had died of consumption
at Paris.
The discovery and the identification were now complete. Nothing
remained but to break the news to Alfred, and to get permission to
remove the remains in the outhouse. I began almost to doubt the
evidence of my own senses when I reflected that the apparently
impracticable object with which we had left Naples was already, by the
merest chance, virtually accomplished.
“The evidence of the paper is decisive,” said I, handing it back.
“There can be no doubt that the remains in the outhouse are the remains
of which we have been in search. May I inquire if any obstacles will be
thrown in our way should the late Mr. Monkton’s nephew wish to remove
his uncle’s body to the family burial-place in England?”
“Where is this nephew?” asked the father superior.
“He is now awaiting my return at the town of Fondi.”
“Is he in a position to prove his relationship?”
“Certainly; he has papers with him which will place it beyond a doubt.”
“Let him satisfy the civil authorities of his claim, and he need expect
no obstacle to his wishes from any one here.”
I was in no humor for talking a moment longer with my sour-tempered
companion than I could help. The day was wearing on me fast; and,
whether night overtook me or not, I was resolved never to stop on my
return till I got back to Fondi. Accordingly, after telling the father
superior that he might expect to hear from me again immediately, I made
my bow and hastened out of the sacristy.
At the convent gate stood my old friend with the tin snuff-box, waiting
to let me out.
“Bless you, may son,” said the venerable recluse, giving me a farewell
pat on the shoulder, “come back soon to your spiritual father who loves
you, and amiably favor him with another tiny, tiny pinch of the
delectable snuff.”