And presently the lovers' trance of joy gave way to thought for others; to a realization of the dangers hovering over the good Cardinal, and the already ill-fated Angela Sovrani, and Aubrey, raising the golden head that nestled against his breast, kissed the sweet lips once more and said—

"Now, my Sylvie, we must take the law into our own hands! We must do all we can to save our friends. The Cardinal must be thought of first. If we are not quick to the rescue he will be sent 'into retreat,' which can be translated as forced detention, otherwise imprisonment. He must leave Rome to-night. Now listen!"

And sitting down beside her, still holding her hand, he gave her an account of his meeting with Cyrillon Vergniaud, otherwise "Gys Grandit," and told her of the sudden passion for Angela that had fired the soul of that fiery writer of the fiercest polemics against priestcraft that had as yet startled France.

"Knowing now all the intended machinations of Gherardi," continued Aubrey, "what I suggest is this,—that you, my Sylvie, should confide in the Princesse D'Agramont, who is fortunately for us, an enemy of the Vatican. Arrange with her that she persuades Angela to return under her escort at once to Paris. Angela is well enough to travel if great care be taken of her, and the Princesse will not spare that. Cyrillon can go with them—I should think that might be managed?"

He smiled as he put this question. Sylvie smiled in answer and replied demurely—

"I should think so!"

"But the Cardinal," resumed Aubrey, "and—and Manuel—must go to- night. I will see Prince Sovrani and arrange it. And Sylvie—will you marry me to-morrow morning?"

Her eyes opened wide and she laughed.

"Why yes, if you wish it!" she said. "But—so soon?"

"Darling, the sooner the better! I mean to take every possible method of making our marriage binding in the sight of the world, before the Vatican has time to launch its thunders. If you are willing, we can be married at the American Consulate to-morrow morning. You must remember that though born of British parents, I do not resign my American citizenship, and would not forego being of the New World for all the old worlds ever made! The American Consul knows me well, and he will begin to make things legal for us to- morrow if you are ready."

"BEGIN to make things legal?" echoed Sylvie smiling. "Will he do no more than begin?"

"My sweetheart, he cannot. He will make you mine according to American law. In England, you will again be made mine according to English law. And then afterwards we will have our religious ceremony!"

Sylvie looked at him perplexedly, then gave a pretty gesture of playful resignation.

"Let everything be as you wish and decide, Aubrey," she said." I give my life and love to you, and have no other will but yours!"

He kissed her.

"I accept the submission, only to put myself more thoroughly at your command," he said tenderly,—"You are my queen,—but with powerful enemies against us, I must see that you are rightfully enthroned!"

A few minutes' more conversation,—then a hurried consultation with Madame Bozier, and Sylvie, changing her lace gown for a simple travelling dress, walked out of the Casa D'Angeli with the faithful Katrine, and taking the first carriage she could find, was driven to the Palazzo where the Princesse D'Agramont had her apartments. Allowing from ten to fifteen minutes to elapse after her departure, Aubrey Leigh himself went out, and standing on the steps of the house, looked up and down carelessly, drawing on his gloves and humming a tune. His quick glance soon espied what he had been almost certain he should see, namely, the straight black-garmented figure of a priest, walking slowly along the street on the opposite side, his hands clasped behind his back, and his whole aspect indicative of devout meditation.

"I thought so!" said Aubrey to himself. "A spy set on already! No time to lose—Cardinal Bonpre must leave Rome at nightfall."

Leisurely he crossed the road, and walking with as slow a step as the priest he had noticed, came opposite to him face to face. With impenetrable solemnity the holy man meekly moved aside,—with equally impenetrable coolness, Aubrey eyed him up and down, then the two passed each other, and Aubrey walked with the same unhasting pace, to the end of the street,—then turned—to see that the priest had paused in his holy musings to crane his neck after him and watch him with the most eager scrutiny. He did not therefore take a carriage at the moment he intended, but walked on into the Corso,— there he sprang into a fiacre and drove straight to the Sovrani Palace. The first figure he saw there, strolling about in the front of the building, was another priest, absorbed in apparently profound thoughts on the sublimity of the sunset, which was just then casting its red glow over the Eternal City. And with the appearance of this second emissary of the Vatican police, he realised the full significance of the existing position of affairs.

Without a moment's loss of time he was ushered into the presence of the Cardinal, and there for a moment stood silent on the threshold of the apartment, overcome by the noble aspect of the venerable prelate, who, seated in his great oaken chair, was listening to a part of the Gospel of Saint Luke, read aloud in clear sweet accents by Manuel.

"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

"And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?

"Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like:

"He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.

"But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; AND THE RUIN OF THAT HOUSE WAS GREAT."

And emphasizing the last line, Manuel closed the book; then at a kindly beckoning gesture from the Cardinal, Aubrey advanced into the room, bowing with deep reverence and honour over the worn old hand the prelate extended.

"My lord Cardinal," he said without further preface, "you must leave Rome to-night!"

The Cardinal raised his gentle blue eyes in wondering protest.

"By whose order?"

"Surely by your own Master's will," said Aubrey with deep earnestness. "For he would not have you be a victim to treachery!"

"Treachery!" And the Cardinal smiled. "My son, traitors harm themselves more than those they would betray. Treachery cannot touch me!"

Aubrey came a step nearer.

"Monsignor, if you do not care for yourself you will care for the boy," he said in a lower tone, with a glance at Manuel, who had withdrawn, and was now standing at one of the windows, the light of the sunset appearing to brighten itself in his fair hair. "He will be separated from you!"

At this the Cardinal rose up, his whole form instinct with resolution and dignity.

"They cannot separate us against the boy's will or mine," he said. "Manuel!"

Manuel came to his call, and the Cardinal placed one hand on his shoulder.

"Child," he said softly, "they threaten to part me from you, if we stay longer here. Therefore we must leave Rome!"

Manuel looked up with a bright flashing glance of tenderness.

"Yes, dear friend, we must leave Rome!" he said. "Rome is no place for you—or for me!"

There was a moment's silence. Something in the attitude of the old man and the young boy standing side by side, moved Aubrey deeply; a sense of awe as well as love overwhelmed him at the sight of these two beings, so pure in mind, so gentle of heart, and so widely removed in years and in life,—the one a priest of the Church, the other a waif of the streets, yet drawn together as it seemed, by the simple spirit of Christ's teaching, in an almost supernatural bond of union. Recovering himself presently he said,

"To-night then, Monsignor?"

The Cardinal looked at Manuel, who answered for him.

"Yes, to-night! We will be ready! For the days are close upon the time when the birth of Christ was announced to a world that does not yet believe in Him! It will be well to leave Rome before then! For the riches of the Pope's palace have nothing to do with the poor babe born in a manger,—and the curse of the Vatican would be a discord in the angels' singing—'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth PEACE, GOODWILL TOWARDS MEN'!"

His young voice rang out, silver clear and sweet, and Aubrey gazed at him in wondering silence.

"To-night!" repeated Manuel, smiling and stretching out his hand with a gentle authoritative gesture. "To-night the Cardinal will leave Rome, and I will leave it too—perchance for ever!"



XXXV.

During these various changes in the lives of those with whom he had been more or less connected, Florian Varillo lay between life and death in the shelter of a Trappist monastery on the Campagna. When he had been seized by the delirium and fever which had flung him, first convulsed and quivering, and then totally insensible, at the foot of the grim, world-forgotten men who passed the midnight hours in digging their own graves, he had been judged by them as dying or dead, and had been carried into a sort of mortuary chapel, cold and bare, and lit only by the silver moonbeams and the flicker of a torch one of the monks carried. Waking in this ghastly place, too weak to struggle, he fell a-moaning like a tortured child, and was, on showing this sign of life, straight-way removed to one of the cells. Here, after hours of horrible suffering, of visions more hideous than Dante's Hell, of stupors and struggles, of fits of strong shrieking, followed by weak tears, he woke one afternoon calm and coherent,—to find himself lying on a straight pallet bed in a narrow stone chamber, dimly lighted by a small slit of window, through which a beam of the sun fell aslant, illumining the blood- stained features of a ghastly Christ stretched on a black crucifix directly opposite him. He shuddered as he saw this, and half-closed his eyes with a deep sigh.

"Tired—tired!" said a thin clear voice beside him. "Always tired! It is only God who is never weary!"

Varillo opened his eyes again languidly, and turned them on a monk sitting beside him,—a monk whose face was neither old nor young, but which presented a singular combination of both qualities. His high forehead, white as marble, had no furrows to mar its smoothness, and from under deep brows a pair of wondering wistful brown eyes peered like the eyes of a lost and starving child. The cheeks were gaunt and livid, the flesh hanging in loose hollows from the high and prominent bones, yet the mouth was that of a youth, firm, well-outlined and sweet in expression, and when he smiled as he did now, he showed an even row of small pearly teeth which might have been envied by many a fair woman.

"Only God who is never weary!" he said, nodding his head slowly, "but we—you and I—we are soon tired!"

Varillo looked at him dubiously; and a moment's thought decided him to assume a certain amount of meekness and docility with this evident brother of some religious order, so that he might obtain both sympathy and confidence from him, and from all whom he might be bound to serve. Ill and weak as he was, the natural tendency of his brain to scheme for his own advantage, was not as yet impaired.

"Ah, yes!" he sighed, "I am very tired!—very ill! I do not know what has happened to me—nor even where I am. What place is this?"

"It is a place where the dead come!" responded the monk. "The dead in heart! the dead in soul—the dead in sin! They come to bury themselves, lest God should find them and crush them into dust before they have time to say a prayer! Like Adam and his wife, they hide themselves 'from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden.'"

Varillo raised himself on one elbow, and stared at the pale face and smiling mouth of the speaker in fear and wonder.

"'A place where the dead come!'" he echoed. "But you are alive—and so am I!"

"You may be—I am not," said the monk quietly. "I died long ago! People who are alive say we are men, though we know ourselves to be ghosts merely. This place is called by the world a Trappist monastery,—you will go out of it if indeed you are alive—you must prove that first! But we shall never come out, because we are dead. One never comes out of the grave!"

With an effort Varillo tried to control the tremor of his nerves, and to understand and reason out these enigmatical sentences of his companion. He began to think—and then to remember,—and by and by was able to conjure up the picture of himself as he had last been conscious of existence,—himself standing outside the gates of a great building on the Campagna, and shaking the iron bars to and fro. It was a Trappist monastery then?—and he was being taken charge of by the Trappist Order? This fact might possibly be turned to his account if he were careful. He lay down once more on his pillow and closed his eyes, and under this pretence of sleep, pondered his position. What were they saying of him in Rome? Was Angela buried? And her great picture? What had become of it?

"How long have I been here?" he asked suddenly.

The monk gave a curious deprecatory gesture with his hands.

"Since you died! So long have you been dead!"

Varillo surveyed him with a touch of scorn.

"You talk in parables—like your Master!" he said with a feeble attempt at a laugh. "I am not strong enough to understand you! And if you are a Trappist monk, why do you talk at all? I thought one of your rules was perpetual silence?"

"Silence? Yes—everyone is silent but me!" said the monk—"I may talk—because I am only Ambrosio,—mad Ambrosio!—something wrong here!" And he touched his forehead. "A little teasing demon lives always behind my eyes, piercing my brain with darts of fire. And he obliges me to talk; he makes me say things I should not—and for all the mischief he works upon me I wear this—see!"—And springing up suddenly he threw aside the folds of his garment, and displayed his bare chest, over which a coarse rope was crossed and knotted so tightly, that the blood was oozing from the broken flesh on either side of it. "For every word I say, I bleed!"

Varillo gave a nervous cry and covered his eyes.

"Do not be afraid!" said Ambrosio, drawing his robe together again, "It is only flesh—not spirit—that is wounded! Flesh is our great snare,—it persuades us to eat, to sleep, to laugh, to love—the spirit commands none of these things. The spirit is of God—it wants neither food nor rest,—it is pure and calm,—it would escape to Heaven if the flesh did not cramp its wings!"

Varillo took his hand from his eyes and tossed himself back on his pillow with a petulant moan.

"Can they do nothing better for me than this?" he ejaculated. "To place me here in this wretched cell alone with a madman!"

Ambrosio stood by the pallet bed looking down upon him with a sort of child-like curiosity.

"No better than this?" he echoed. "Would you have anything better? Safe—safe from the world,—no one can find you or follow you—no one can discover your sin—"

"Sin! What sin!" demanded Varillo fiercely. "You talk like a fool— as you own yourself to be! I have committed no sin!"

"Good—good!" said Ambrosio. "Then you must be canonized with all the rest of the saints! And St. Peter's shall be illuminated, and the Pope shall be carried in to see you and to lay his hands upon you, and they shall shout to him, 'Tu es Petrus!' and no one will remember what kind of a bruised, bleeding, tortured, broken-down Head of the Church stood before the multitude when Pilate cried 'Ecce homo!'"

Varillo stared at him in unwilling fascination. He seemed carried beyond himself,—it was as though some other force spoke through him, and though he scarcely raised his voice, its tone was so clear, musical, and penetrative that it seemed to give light and warmth to the cold dullness of the cell.

"You must not mind me!" he went on softly, "My thoughts have all gone wrong, they tell me,—so have my words. I was young once—and in that time I used to study hard and try to understand what it was that God wished me to do with my life. But there were so many things—so much confusion—so much difficulty—and the end is— here!" He smiled. "Well! It is a quiet end,—they say the devil knocks at the gate of the monastery often at midnight, but he never enters in,—never—unless perchance you are he!"

Varillo turned himself about pettishly.

"If I were he, I should not trouble you long," he said. "Even the devil might be glad to make exit from such a hole as this! Who is your Superior?"

"We have only one Superior,—God!" replied Ambrosio. "He who never slumbers or sleeps—He who troubles Himself to look into everything, from the cup of a flower to the heart of a man! Who shall escape the lightning of His glance, or think to cover up a hidden vileness from the discovery of the Most High?"

"I did not ask you for pious jargon," said Varillo, beginning to lose temper, yet too physically weak to contend with the wordy vagaries of this singular personage who had evidently been told off to attend upon him. "I asked you who is the Head or Ruler of this community? Who gives you the daily rule of conduct which you all obey?"

Ambrosio's brown eyes grew puzzled, and he shook his head.

"I obey no one," he said. "I am mad Ambrosio!—I walk about in my grave, and speak, and sing, while others remain silent. I would tell you if I knew of anyone greater than God,—but I do not!"

Varillo uttered an impatient groan. It was no good asking this creature anything,—his answers were all wide of the mark.

"God," went on Ambrosio, turning his head towards the light that came streaming in through the narrow window of the cell, "is in that sunbeam! He can enter where He will, and we never know when we shall meet Him face to face! He may possess with His spirit the chaste body of a woman, as in our Blessed Lady,—or He may come to us in the form of a child, speaking to the doctors in the temple and arguing with them on the questions of life and death. He is in all things; and the very beggar at our gates who makes trial of our charity, may for all we know, be our Lord disguised! Shall I tell you a strange story?"

Varillo gave a weary sign of assent, half closing his eyes. It was better this crazed fool should talk, he thought, than that he should lie there and listen, as it were, to the deadly silence which in the pauses of the conversation could be felt, like the brooding heaviness of a thick cloud hanging over the monastery walls.

"It happened long ago," said Ambrosio. "There was a powerful prince who thought that to be rich and strong was sufficient to make all the world his own. But the world belongs to God,—and He does not always give it over to the robber and spoiler. This prince I tell you of, had been the lover of a noble lady, but he was false- hearted; and the false soon grow weary of love! And so, tiring of her beauty and her goodness, he stabbed her mortally to death, and thought no one had seen him do the deed. For the only witness to it was a ray of moonlight falling through the window—just as the sunlight falls now!—see!" And he pointed to the narrow aperture which lit the cell, while Florian Varillo, shuddering in spite of himself, lay motionless. "But when the victim was dead, this very ray of moonlight turned to the shape of a great angel, and the angel wore the semblance of our Lord,—and the glory and the wonder of that vision was as the lightning to slay and utterly destroy! And from that hour for many years, the murderer was followed by a ray of light, which never left him; all day he saw it flickering in his path,—all night it flashed across his bed, driving sleep from his eyes and rest from his brain!—till at last maddened by remorse he confessed his crime to a priest, and was taken into a grave like this, a monastery,—where he died, so they say, penitent. But whether he was forgiven, the story does not say!"

"It is a stupid story!" said Varillo, opening his eyes, and smiling in the clear, candid way he always assumed when he had anything to hide. "It has neither point nor meaning."

"You think not?" said Ambrosio. "But perhaps you are not conscious of God. If you were, that sunbeam we see now should make you careful, lest an angel should be in it!"

"Careful? Why should I be careful?" Varillo half raised himself on the bed. "I have nothing to hide!"

At this Ambrosio began to laugh.

"Oh, you are happy—happy!" he exclaimed. "You are the first I ever heard say that! Nothing to hide! Oh, fortunate, fortunate man! Then indeed you should not be here—for we all have something to hide, and we are afraid even of the light,—that is why we make such narrow holes for it; we are always praying God not to look at our sins,—not to uncover them and show us what vile souls we are—we men who could be as gods in life, if we did not choose to be devils- -"

Here he suddenly broke off, and a curious grey rigidity stole over his features, as if some invisible hand were turning him into stone. His eyes sparkled feverishly, but otherwise his face was the lace of the dead. The horrible fixity of his aspect at that moment, so terrified Varillo that he gave a loud cry, and almost before he knew he had uttered it, another monk entered the cell. Varillo gazed at him affrightedly, and pointed to Ambrosio. The monk said nothing, but merely took the rigid figure by its arm and shook it violently. Then, as suddenly as he had lost speech and motion, Ambrosio recovered both, and went on talking evenly, taking up the sentence he had broken off—"If we did not choose to be as devils, we might be as gods!" Then looking around him with a smile, he added, "Now you are here, Filippo, you will explain!"

The monk addressed as Filippo remained silent, still holding him by the arm, and presently quietly guiding him, led him out of the cell. When the two brethren had disappeared, Varillo fell back on his pillows exhausted.

"What am I to do now?" he thought. "I must have been here many days!—all Rome must know of Angela's death—all Rome must wonder at my absence—all Rome perhaps suspects me of being her murderer! And yet—this illness may be turned to some account. I can say that it was caused by grief at hearing the sudden news of her death—that I was stricken down by my despair—but then—I must not forget—I was to have been in Naples. Yes—the thing looks suspicious—I shall be tracked!—I must leave Italy. But how?"

Bathed in cold perspiration he lay, wondering, scheming, devising all sorts of means of escape from his present surroundings, when he became suddenly aware of a tall dark figure in the cell,—a figure muffled nearly to its eyes, which had entered with such stealthy softness and silence as to give almost the impression of some supernatural visitant. He uttered a faint exclamation—the figure raised one hand menacingly.

"Be silent!" These words were uttered in a harsh whisper. "If you value your life, hold your peace till I have said what I come to say!"

Moving to the door of the cell, the mysterious visitor bolted it across and locked it—then dropped the disguising folds of his heavy mantle and monk's cowl, and disclosed the face and form of Domenico Gherardi. Paralysed with fear Varillo stared at him,—every drop of blood seemed to rush from his heart to his brain, turning him sick and giddy, for in the dark yet fiery eyes of the priest, there was a look that would have made the boldest tremble.

"I knew that you were here," he said, his thin lips widening at the corners in a slight disdainful smile. "I saw you at the inn on the road to Frascati, and watched you shrink and tremble as I spoke of the murder of Angela Sovrani! You screened your face behind a paper you were reading,—that was not necessary, for your hand shook,—and so betrayed itself as the hand of the assassin!"

With a faint moan, Varillo shudderingly turned away and buried his head in his pillow.

"Why do you now wish to hide yourself?" pursued Gherardi. "Now when you are an honest man at last, and have shown yourself in your true colors? You were a liar hitherto, but now you have discovered yourself to be exactly as the devil made you, why you can look at me without fear—we understand each other!"

Still Varillo hid his eyes and moaned, and Gherardi thereupon laid a rough hand on his shoulder.

"Come, man! You are not a sick child to lie cowering there as though seized by the plague! What ails you? You have done no harm! You tried to kill something that stood in your way,—I admire you for that! I would do the same myself at any moment!"

Slowly Varillo lifted himself and looked up at the dark strong face above him.

"A pity you did not succeed!" went on Gherardi, "for the world would have been well rid of at least one feminine would-be 'genius,' whose skill puts that of man to shame! But perhaps it may comfort you to know that your blow was not strong enough or deep enough, and that your betrothed wife yet lives to wed you—if she will!"

"Lives!" cried Florian. "Angela lives!"

"Ay, Angela lives!" replied Gherardi coldly. "Does that give you joy? Does your lover's heart beat with ecstasy to know that she— twenty times more gifted than you, a hundred times more famous than you, a thousand times more beloved by the world than you—lives, to be crowned with an immortal fame, while you are relegated to scorn and oblivion! Does that content you?"

A dull red flush crept over Varillo's cheeks,—his hand flenched the coverlet of his bed convulsively.

"Lives!" He muttered. "She lives! Then it must be by a miracle! For I drove the steel deep . . . deep home!"

Gherardi looked at him curiously, with the air of a scientist watching some animal writhing under vivisection.

"Perhaps Cardinal Felix prayed for her!" he said mockingly, "and even as he healed the crippled child in Rouen he may have raised his niece from the dead! But miracle or no miracle, she lives. That is why I am here!"

"Why—you—are—here?" repeated Varillo mechanically.

"How dull you are!" said Gherardi tauntingly. "A man like you with a dozen secret intrigues in Rome, should surely be able to grasp a situation better! Angela Sovrani lives, I tell you,—I am here to help you to kill her more surely! Your first attempt was clumsy,— and dangerous to yourself, but—murder her reputation, amico, murder her reputation!—and so build up your own!"

Slowly Varillo turned his eyes upon him. Gherardi met them unflinchingly, and in that one glance the two were united in the spirit of their evil intention.

"You are a man," went on Gherardi, watching him closely. "Will you permit yourself to be baffled and beaten in the race for fame by a woman? Shame on you if you do! Listen! I am prepared to swear that you are innocent of having attempted the murder of your affianced wife, and I will also assert that the greater part of her picture was painted by you, though you were, out of generosity and love for her, willing to let her take the credit of the whole conception!"

Varillo started upright.

"God!" he cried. "Is it possible! Will you do this for me?"

"Not for you—No," said Gherardi contemptuously. "I will do nothing for you! If I saw you lying in the road at my feet dying for want of a drop of water, I would not give it to you! What I do, I do for myself—and the Church!"

By this time Varillo had recovered his equanimity. A smile came readily to his lips as he said—

"Ah, the Church! Excellent institution! Like charity, it covers a multitude of sins!"

"It exists for that object," answered Gherardi with a touch of ironical humor. "Its own sins it covers,—and shows up the villainies of those who sin outside its jurisdiction. Angela Sovrani is one of these,—her uncle the Cardinal is another,—Sylvie Hermenstein—"

"What of her?" cried Varillo, his eyes sparkling. "Is her marriage broken off?"

"Broken off!" Gherardi gave a fierce gesture. "Would that it were! No! She renounces the Church for the sake of Aubrey Leigh—she leaves the faith of her fathers—"

"And takes the wealth of her fathers with her!" finished Varillo, maliciously. "I see! I understand! The Church has reason for anger!"

"It has reason!" echoed Gherardi. "And we of the Church choose you as the tool wherewith to work our vengeance. And why? Because you are a born liar!—because you can look straight in the eyes of man or woman, and swear to a falsehood without flinching!—because you are an egotist, and will do anything to serve yourself—because you have neither heart nor conscience—nor soul nor feeling,—because you are an animal in desires and appetite,-because of this, I say, we yoke you to our chariot wheels, knowing you may be trusted to drive over and trample down the creatures that might be valuable to you if they did not stand in your way!"

Such bitterness, such scorn, such loathing were in his accents, that even the callous being he addressed was stung, and made a feeble gesture of protest.

"You judge me harshly," he began—

Gherardi laughed.

"Judge you! Not I! No judgment is wanted. I read you like a book through and through,—a book that should be set on Nature's Index Expurgatorius, as unfit to meet the eyes of the faithful! You are a low creature, Florian Varillo,—and unscrupulous as I am myself, I despise you for meanness greater than even I am capable of! But you are a convenient tool, ready to hand, and I use you for the Church's service! If you were to refuse to do as I bid you, I would brand you through the world as the murderer you are! So realize to the full how thoroughly I have you in my power. Now understand me,—you must leave this place to-morrow. I will send my carriage for you, and you shall come at once to me, to me in Rome as my guest,—my HONOURED guest!" And he emphasized the word sarcastically. "You are weak and ill yet, they tell me here,—so much the better for you. It will make you all the more interesting! You will find it easier to play the part of injured innocence! Do you understand?"

"I understand," answered Varillo with a faint shudder, for the strong and relentless personality of Gherardi overpowered him with a sense of terror which he could not wholly control.

"Good! Then we will say no more. Brief words are best on such burning matters. To-morrow at six in the afternoon I will send for you. Be ready! Till then—try to rest—try to sleep without dreaming of a scaffold!"

He folded his mantle around him again and prepared to depart.

"Sleep," he repeated. "Sleep with a cold heart and quiet mind! Think that it is only a woman's name—a woman's work—a woman's honour, that stand in your way,—and congratulate yourself with the knowledge that the Church and her Divine authority will help you to remove all three! Farewell!"

He turned, and unlocked the door of the cell. As he threw it open, he was confronted by the monk Ambrosio, who was outside on the very threshold.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded suspiciously. "I had a permit from the Superior to speak to your charge alone."

"And were you not alone?" returned Ambrosio smiling. "I was not with you! I was here as sentinel, to prevent anyone disturbing you. Poor Ambrosio—mad Ambrosio! He is no good at all except to guard the dead!"

Gherardi looked at him scrutinizingly, and noted the lack-lustre eyes, the helpless childish expression, of the half-young, half-old face confronting his own.

"Guard the dead as much as you please," he said harshly. "But take heed how you spy on the living! Be careful of the sick man lying yonder—we want him back with us in Rome to-morrow."

Ambrosio nodded.

"Back in Rome—good—good!" he said. "Then he is living after all! I thought he was dead in his sins as I am,—but you tell me he lives, and will go back to Rome!—Oh yes—I will take care of him—good care!—do not fear! I know how to guard him so that he shall not escape you!"

Gherardi looked at him again sharply, but he was playing with his long rosary and smiling foolishly, and there seemed no use in wasting further speech upon him. So, muffling himself in his cloak, he strode away, and Ambrosio entered the cell.

"You shall have meat and wine presently," he said, approaching the bed where Florian lay. "The devil has given orders that you shall be well fed!"

Varillo looked up and smiled kindly. He could assume any expression at command, and it suited his purpose just now to be all gentleness.

"My poor friend!" he said compassionately. "Your wits are far astray! Devil? Nay—he who has just left us is more of a saint!"

Ambrosio's brown eyes flashed, but he maintained a grave and immovable aspect.

"The devil has often mocked us in saint's disguise," he said slowly. "I tell the porter here every night to keep the gates well locked against him,—but this time it was no use; he has entered in. And now we shall have great work to get him out!"

Varillo resting his head on one arm, studied him curiously.

"You must have lived a strange life in the world!" he said. "That is if you were ever in the world at all. Were you?"

"Oh yes, I was in the world," replied Ambrosio calmly. "I was in the midst of men and women who passed their whole lives in acts of cruelty and treachery to one another. I never met a man who was honest; I never saw a woman who was true! I wondered where God was that He permitted such vile beings to live and take His name in vain. He seemed lost and gone,—I could not find Him!"

"Ah!" ejaculated Florian languidly. "And did yon discover Him here? In this monastery?"

"No—He is not here, for we are all dead men," said Ambrosio. "And God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead! Shall I tell you where I found him?" And he advanced a step or two, raising one hand warningly as though he were entrusted with some message of doom—"I found Him in sin! I tried to live a life of truth in a world of lies, but the lies were too strong for me,—they pulled me down! I fell—into a black pit of crime—reckless, determined, conscious wickedness,—and so found God—in my punishment!"

He clasped his hands together with an expression of strange ecstasy.

"Down into the darkness!" he said. "Down through long vistas of shadow and blackness you go, glad and exultant, delighting in evil, and thinking 'God sees me not!' And then suddenly at the end, a sword of fire cuts the darkness asunder,—and the majesty of the Divine Law breaks your soul on the wheel!"

He looked steadfastly at Varillo.

"So you will find,—so you must find, if you ever go down into the darkness."

"Ay, if I ever go," said Florian gently. "But I shall not."

"No?—then perhaps you are there already?" said Ambrosio smiling, and playing with his rosary. "For those who say they will never sin have generally sinned!"

Varillo held the same kind look of compassion in his eyes. He was fond of telling his fellow-artists that he had a "plastic" face,— and this quality served him well just now. He might have been a hero and martyr, from the peaceful and patient expression of his features, and he so impressed by his manner a lay-brother who presently entered to give him his evening meal, that he succeeded in getting rid of Ambrosio altogether.

"You are sure you are strong enough to be left without an attendant?" asked the lay-brother solicitously, quite captivated by the gentleness of his patient. "There is a special evening service to-night in the chapel, and Ambrosio should be there to play the organ—for he plays well—but this duty had been given to Fra Filippo—"

"Nay, but let Ambrosio fulfil his usual task," said Varillo considerately. "I am much better—much stronger,—and as my good friend Monsignor Gherardi desires me to be in Rome to-morrow, and to stay with him till I am quite restored to health, I must try to rest as quietly as I can till my hour of departure."

"You must be a great man to have Domenico Gherardi for a friend!" said the lay-brother wistfully.

Here Ambrosio suddenly burst into a loud laugh.

"You are right! He is a great man!—one of the greatest in Rome, or for that matter in the world! And he means to be yet greater!" And with that he turned on his heel and left the cell abruptly.

Varillo, languidly sipping the wine that had been brought to him with his food, looked after him with a pitying smile.

"Poor soul!" he said gently.

"He was famous once," said the lay-brother, lowering his voice as he spoke. "One of the most famous sculptors in Europe. But something went wrong with his life, and he came here. It is difficult to make him understand orders, or obey them, but the Superior allows him to remain on account of his great skill in music. On that point at least he is sane."

"Indeed!" said Varillo indifferently. He was beginning to weary of the conversation, and wished to be alone. "It is well for him that he is useful to you in some regard. And now, my friend, will you leave me to rest awhile? If it be possible I shall try to sleep now till morning."

"One of us will come to you at daybreak," said the lay-brother. "You are still very weak—you will need assistance to dress. Your clothes are here at the foot of the bed. I hope you will sleep well."

"Thank you!" said Varillo, conveying an almost tearful look of gratitude into his eyes—"You are very good to me! God bless you!"

The lay-brother made a gentle deprecatory gesture of his hands and retired, and Varillo was left to his own reflections. He lay still, thinking deeply, and marvelling at the unexpected rescue out of his difficulties so suddenly afforded him.

"With Gherardi to support me, I can say anything!" he mused, his heart beating quickly and exultingly. "I can say anything and swear anything! And even if the sheath of my dagger has been found, it will be no proof, for I can say it is not mine. Any lie I choose to tell will have Gherardi's word to warrant it!—so I am safe—unless Angela speaks!"

He considered this possibility for a moment, then smiled.

"But she never will! She is one of those strange women who endure without complaint,—she is too lofty and pure for the ways of the world, and the world naturally takes vengeance upon her. There is not a man born that does not hate too pure a woman; it is his joy to degrade her if he can! This is the way of Nature; what is a woman made for except to subject herself to her master! And when she rises superior to him—superior in soul, intellect, heart and mind, he sees in her nothing but an abnormal prodigy, to be stared at, laughed at, despised—but never loved! The present position of affairs is Angela's fault, not mine. She should not have concealed the work she was doing from her lover, who had the right to know all her secrets!"

He laughed,—a low malicious laugh, and then lay tranquilly on his pillows gazing at the gradually diminishing light. Day was departing—night was coming on,—and as the shadows lengthened, the solemn sound of the organ began to vibrate through the walls of the monastery like far-off thunder growing musical. With a certain sensuous delight in the beautiful, Varillo listened to it with pleasure; he had no mind to probe the true meaning of music, but the mere sound was soothing and sublime, and seemed in its gravity, to match the "tone" of the light that was gradually waning. So satisfied was he with that distant pulse of harmony that he began weaving some verses in his head to "His Absent Lady,"—and succeeded in devising quite a charming lyric to her whose honour and renown he was ready to kill. So complex, so curious, so callous, yet sensuous, and utterly egotistical was his nature, that had Angela truly died under his murderous blow, he would have been ready now to write such exquisite verses in the way of a lament for her loss, as should have made a world of sentimental women weep, not knowing the nature of the man.

The last glimpse of day vanished, and the cell was only illuminated by a flickering gleam which crept through the narrow crevice of the door from the oil lamp outside in the corridor. The organ music ceased—to be followed by the monotonous chanting of the monks at their evening orisons,—and in turn, these too came to an end, and all was silent. Easily and restfully Florian Varillo, calling himself in his own mind poet, artist, and lover of all women rather than one, turned on his pillow and slept peacefully,—a calm deep sleep such as is only supposed to visit the innocent and pure of conscience, but which in truth just as often refreshes the senses of the depraved and dissolute, provided they are satisfied with evil as their good. How many hours he slept he did not know, but he was wakened at last by a terrible sense of suffocation, and he sat up gasping for breath, to find the cell full of thick smoke and burning stench. The flickering reflection of the lamp was gone, and as he instinctively leaped from his bed and grasped his clothes, he heard the monastery bell above him swinging to and fro, with a jarring heavy clang. Weak from the effects of his illness, and scarcely able to stand, he dragged on some of his garments, and rushing to the door threw it open, to be met with dense darkness and thick clouds of smoke wreathing towards him in all directions. He uttered a loud shriek.

"Fire!"

The bell clanged on slowly over his head, but otherwise there was no response. Stumbling along, blinded, suffocated, not knowing at any moment whether he might not be precipitated down some steep flight of stairs or over some high gallery in the building, he struggled to follow what seemed to be a cooling breath of air which streamed through the smoke as though blowing in from some open door, and as he felt his way with his hands on the wall he suddenly heard the organ.

"Thank God!" he thought, "I am near the chapel! The fire has broken out in this part of the building—the monks do not know and are still at prayer. I shall be in time to save them all! . . ."

A small tongue of red flame flashed upon his eyes—he recoiled—then pressed forward again, seeing a door in front of him. The organ music sounded nearer and nearer; he rushed to the door, half choked and dizzy, and pushing it open, reeled into the organ loft, where at the organ, sat the monk Ambrosio, shaking out such a storm of music as might have battered the gates of Heaven or Hell. Varillo leaped forward—then, as he saw the interior of the chapel, uttered one agonized shriek, and stood as though turned to stone. For the whole place was in flames!—everything from the altar to the last small statue set in a niche, was ablaze, and only the organ, raised like a carven pinnacle, appeared to be intact, set high above the blazing ruin. Enrapt in his own dreams, Ambrosio sat, pouring thunderous harmony out of the golden-tubed instrument which as yet, with its self-acting machinery, was untouched by the flames, and Varillo half-mad with terror, sprang at him like a wild beast

"Stop!" he cried "Stop, fool! Do you not see—can you not understand—the monastery is on fire!"

Ambrosio shook him off, his brown eyes were clear and bright,—his whole expression stern and resolved.

"I know it," he replied. "And we shall burn—you and I—together!"

'Oh, mad brute!" cried Varillo. "Tell me which way to go!—where are the brethren?"

"Outside!" he answered "Safe!—away at the farther end of the garden, digging their own graves, as usual! Do you not hear the bell? We are alone in the building!—I have locked the doors,—the fire is kindled inside! We shall be dead before the flames burst through!"

"Madman!" shrieked Varillo, recoiling as the thick volumes of smoke rolled up from the blazing altar. "Die if you must!—but I will not! Where are the windows?—the doors?—"

"Locked and bolted fast," said Ambrosio, with a smile of triumph. "There is no loophole of escape for you! The world might let you go free to murder and betray,—but I—Ambrosio,—a scourge in the Lord's hand—I will never let you go! Pray—pray before it is too late! I heard the devil tempt you—I heard you yield to his tempting! You were both going to ruin a woman—that is devil's work. And God told me what to do—to burn the evil out by flame, and purify your soul! Pray, brother, pray!—for in the searching and tormenting fire it will be too late! Pray! Pray!"

And pressing his hands again upon the organ he struck out a passage of chords like the surging of waves upon the shore or storm-winds in the forest, and began to sing,

"Confutatis maledictis Flammis acribus addictis Voci me cum benedictis!"

Infuriated to madness but too physically weak to struggle with one who, though wandering in brain, was sound in body, Varillo tried to drag him from his seat,—but the attempt was useless. Ambrosio seemed possessed by a thousand electric currents of force and resolution combined. He threw off Varillo as though he were a mere child, and went on singing—

"Oro supplex et acclinis Cor contritum quasi cinis: Gere curam mei finis. . . . . Lacrymosa dies illa,—"

Driven to utter desperation, Varillo stood for a moment inert,— then, suddenly catching sight of a rope hanging from one of the windows close at hand, he rushed to it and pulled it furiously. The top of the window yielded, and fell open on its hinge—the smoke rushed up to the aperture, and Florian, still clinging to the rope, shouted, "Help!—Help!" with all the force he could muster. But the air blowing strongly against the smoke fanned the flames in the body of the chapel,—they leaped higher and higher,—and—seeing the red glow deepening about him, Ambrosio smiled.—"Cry your loudest, you will never be heard!" he said—"Those who are busy with graves have done with life! You had best pray while you have time—let God take you with His name on your lips!"

And as the smoke and flame climbed higher and higher and began to wreathe itself about the music gallery, he resumed his solemn singing.

"Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurgat ex favilla Judicandus homo reus Huic ergo parce, Deus: Pie Jesu Domine Dona eis requiem!"

But Varillo still shrieked "Help!" and his frenzied cries were at last answered. The great bell overhead ceased ringing suddenly,—and its cessation created an effect of silence even amid the noise of the crackling fire and the continued grave music of the organ. Then came a quick tramp of many feet—a hubbub of voices—and loud battering knocks at the chapel door. Ambrosio laughed triumphantly.

"We are at prayers!" he cried—"We admit no one! The devil and I are at prayers!"

Varillo sprang at him once more.

"Madman! Show me the way!" he screamed. "Show me the way down from this place or I will strangle you!"

"Find your own way!" answered Ambrosio—"Make it—as you have always made it!—and follow it—to Hell!"

As he spoke the gallery rocked to and fro, and a tall flame leaped at the organ like a living thing ready to seize and devour. Still the knocking and hammering continued, and still Ambrosio played wild music—till all at once the chapel door was broken open and a group of pale spectral faces in monk's cowls peered through the smoke, and then retreated again.

"Help!" shrieked Varillo—"Help!"

But the air rushing through the door and meeting with that already blowing through the window raised a perfect pyramid of flame which rose straight up and completely encircled the organ. With a frightful cry Varillo rushed to Ambrosio's side, and cowering down, clung to his garments.

"Oh, God!—Oh, God! Have mercy!—"

"He will have mercy!" said Ambrosio, still keeping his hands on the organ-keys and drawing out strange plaintive chords of solemn harmony—"He will have mercy—be sure of it! Ambrosio will ask Him to be merciful!—Ambrosio has saved you from crime worse than death,—Ambrosio has cleansed you by fire! Ambrosio will help you to find God in the darkness!"

Smoke and flame encircled them,—for one moment more their figures were seen like black specks in the wreathing columns of fire—for one moment more the music of the organ thundered through the chapel,—then came a terrific crash—a roar of the victorious flames as they sprang up high to the roof of the building, and then—then nothing but a crimson glare on the Campagna, seen for miles and miles around, and afterwards described to the world by the world's press as the "Burning Down of a Trappist Monastery" in which no lives had been lost save those of one Fra Ambrosio, long insane, who was supposed to have kindled the destructive blaze in a fit of mania,—and of a stranger, sick of malarial fever, whom the monks had sheltered, name unknown.



XXXVI.

The same night which saw the red glare of the burning monastery reflected from end to end of the Campagna, like the glow of some gigantic pagan funeral pyre, saw also the quiet departure of Cardinal Bonpre and his "foundling" Manuel from Rome. Innocent of all evil, their escape was after the manner of the guilty; for the spies of the Vatican were on guard outside the Sovrani Palace, and one priest after another "relieved the watch" in the fashion of military sentries. But like all too cunning schemers, these pious detectives overreached the goal of their intention, and bearing in mind the fact of the Cardinal's unsuspecting simplicity, it never occurred to them to think he had been put on his guard so soon, or that he would take advantage of any secret way of flight. But the private door of Angela's studio through which Florian Varillo had fled, and the key of which he had thrown into the Tiber, had been forced open, and set in use again, and through this the harmless prelate, with his young companion, passed without notice or hindrance, and under the escort of Aubrey Leigh and Cyrillon Vergniaud, reached the railway station unintercepted by any message or messenger from the Papal court, and started for Paris and London. When the train, moving slowly at first from the platform, began to rush, and finally darted swiftly out of sight, Aubrey breathed more easily.

"Thank God!" he said. "They are safe for the present! England is a free country!"

"Is it?" And Vergniaud smiled a little. "Are you sure? England cannot dispute the authority of the Vatican over its own sworn servants. Are you not yourself contending against the power of Rome in Great Britain?"

"Not only against Rome do I contend," replied Aubrey. "My battle is against all who seek to destroy the true meaning and intention of Christianity. But so far as Romanism is concerned,—we have a monarch whose proudest title is Defender of the Faith—that is Defender of the Faith against Papal interference."

"Yes? And yet her bishops pander to Rome? Ah, my dear friend!—your monarch is kept in ignorance of the mischief being worked in her realm by the Papal secret service! Cardinal Bonpre in London is as much under the jurisdiction of the Pope as if he still remained in Rome, and though he may be able to delay the separation between himself and the boy he cherishes, he will scarcely avert it!"

"Why should they wish to part that child from him I wonder!" said Aubrey musingly.

Cyrillon shrugged his shoulders.

"Who can tell! They have their reasons, no doubt. Why should they wish to excommunicate Tolstoi? But they do! Believe me, there is a time of terror coming for the religious world—especially in your great English Empire. And when your good Queen dies, the trouble will begin!"

Aubrey was silent for some minutes.

"We must work, Cyrillon!" he said at last, laying a hand on his friend's shoulder. "We must work and we must never leave off working! One man may do much,—all history proves the conquering force of one determined will. You, young as you are, have persuaded France to listen to you,—I am doing my best to persuade England to hear me. We are only two—but others will follow. I know it is difficult!—it is harassing and often heartbreaking to insist on Truth when the whole world's press is at work bolstering up false gods, false ideals, false art, false sentiment,—but if we are firm- -if we hold an unflinching faith, we shall conquer!"

"You are brave!" said Cyrillon with a glance of mingled trust and admiration. "But you are an exception to the majority of men. The majority are cruel and treacherous, and stupid as well. Dense stupidity is hard to fight against! Who for example, do you suppose, will understand the lesson of Donna Sovrani's great picture?"

"All the New World!" said Aubrey, with enthusiasm,—"It is for the New World—not the Old. And that reminds me to-day the picture is on view to the art-critics and experts for the first time. I prophesy it will be sold at once!"

"That would make her father happy," said Cyrillon slowly. "But she— she will not care!"

Aubrey looked at him attentively.

"Have you seen her?"

"Yes. For a moment only. I called at the Sovrani Palace and her father received me. We talked for some time together. I think he knows who dealt the murderous blow at his daughter, but he says nothing positive. He showed me the picture. It is great—sublime! I could have knelt before it! Then he took me to see Her—and I would have knelt still more readily! But—she is changed!"

"And—are you?" asked Aubrey with a slight smile.

"Changed? I? No—I shall never change. I loved her at first sight—I love her still more now. Yet I see the truth—she is broken- hearted!"

"Time and great tenderness will heal the wound," said Aubrey gently. "Meanwhile have patience!"

Cyrillon gave him a look more eloquent than speech, and by mutual consent they said no more on the subject of Angela just then.

Next morning at the American Consulate, Sylvie, Comtesse Hermenstein, was quietly married by civil law to Aubrey Leigh. The ceremony took place in the presence of the Princesse D'Agramont, Madame Bozier, and Cyrillon Vergniaud. When it was over the wedded lovers and their friends returned to the Sovrani Palace, there to join Angela who had come down from her sick room to grace the occasion. She looked as fair and fragile as the delicate "Killmeny" of the poet's legend, just returned from wondrous regions of "faery," though the land poor Angela had wandered away from was the Land of Sweet Delusion, which enchanted garden she would never enter again. Pale and thin, with her beautiful eyes drooping wearily under their dreamy tired lids, she was the very ghost of her former self;- -and the child-like way in which she clung to her father, and kept near her father always, was pathetic in the extreme. When Sylvie and Aubrey entered, with their three companions, she advanced to greet them, smiling bravely, though her lips quivered.

"All happiness be with you, dear!" she said softly, and she slipped a chain of fine pearls round Sylvie's neck. "These were my mother's pearls,—wear them for my sake!"

Sylvie kissed her in silence,—she could not say anything, even by the way of thanks,—her heart was too full.

"We shall be very lonely without you, darling," went on Angela. "Shall we not, father?" Prince Pietro came to her side, and taking her hand patted it consolingly—"But we shall know you are happy in England—and we shall try and come and see you as soon as I get strong,—I want to join my uncle and Manuel. I miss Manuel very much,—he and my father are everything to me now!"

She stretched out her hand to Aubrey, who bent over it and kissed it tenderly.

"You are happy now, Mr. Leigh?" she said smiling.

"Very happy!" said Aubrey. "May you be as happy soon!"

She shook her head, and the smile passed from her eyes and lips, leaving her face very sorrowful.

"I must work," she said. "Work brings content—if it does not insure joy." Her gaze involuntarily wandered to her great picture, "The Coming of Christ," which now, unveiled in all its splendour, occupied one end of her studio, filling it with a marvellous colour and glow of light. "Yes, I must work! That big canvas of mine will not sell I fear! My father was right. It was a mistake"—and she sighed—"a mistake altogether,—in more ways than one! And what is the use of painting a picture for the world if there is no chance to let the world see it?"

Prince Pietro looked at her benevolently.

"Your father was right, you think? Well, Angela mia, I think I had better be the first to own that your father was wrong! The picture is already sold;—that is if you consent to sell it!"

Angela turned very white. "If I consent to sell it? Sell it—to whom?"

Sylvie put a caressing arm around her. "Your father had the news this morning," she said, "and we all decided to tell it to you as soon as we came back from the Consulate. A wedding-surprise on our parts, Angela! You know the picture was on view for the first time yesterday to some of the critics and experts in Rome?"

Angela made a faint sign of assent. Her wistful eyes were full of wonder and anxiety.

"Well, among them was a purchaser for America—Oh, you need not look at me, my dear!—I have nothing to do with it! You shall see the letter your father received—and you shall decide; but the end of the whole matter is, Angela, that if you consent, the picture will be bought, not by any private purchaser, but by the American nation."

"The American nation!" repeated Angela. "Are you really, really sure of this?"

"Quite sure!" said Sylvie joyously. "And you must say good-bye to it and let it go across the wide ocean—out to the New World all alone with its grand and beautiful message,—unless you go with it and show the Americans something even more perfect and beautiful in yourself than the picture!—and you must be content to take twenty thousand pounds for it, and be acknowledged as the greatest painter of the age as well! This will be hard work, Angela!—but you must resign yourself!"

She laughed for pure delight in her friend's triumph,—but Angela turned at once to her father.

"Dearest father!" she said softly. "I am glad—for your sake!"

He folded her in his arms, too deeply moved to speak, and then as he felt her trembling, he led her to a chair and beckoned to Cyrillon Vergniaud who had stood apart, watching the little scene in silence.

"Come and talk to this dear girl!" he said. "She is not at all a good hostess to-day! She ought to entertain the bride and bridegroom here,—but it seems as if she needed to be entertained herself!" And then, as Cyrillon obeyed him, and drew near the idol of his thoughts with such hesitating reverence as might befit a pilgrim approaching the shrine of a beloved saint, he turned away and was just about to speak to the Princesse D'Agramont when a servant entered and said hurriedly—

"Monsignor Gherardi desires to see Cardinal Bonpre!"

There was a dead pause. The group of friends looked at one another in embarrassment. Angela rose from her chair trembling and glanced instinctively at her picture—and for a moment no one seemed quite certain what should be done next. The Princesse D'Agramont was the first to recover her self-possession.

"Angela must not be here," she said. "She is not strong enough to stand a scene. And no doubt Gherardi has come to make one! We will leave him to you, Mr. Leigh—and to Gys Grandit!"

She withdrew at once with Angela, and in another moment Gherardi was ushered in. He glanced quickly around him as he made his formal salutation,—his eyes rested for a moment on Sylvie and Aubrey Leigh—then he addressed himself to Prince Pietro.

"I am sorry to intrude upon you, Prince!" he said. "I have an urgent matter to discuss with Cardinal Bonpre, and must see him at once."

"I regret that it is not in my power to gratify your desire, Monsignor," said Prince Sovrani with stiff courtesy. "My brother-in- law the Cardinal left Rome last night"

"Left Rome! Left Rome!" exclaimed Gherardi. "Who gave him permission to leave Rome!"

"Was permission necessary?" asked Aubrey, stepping forward.

"I did not address you, sir," returned Gherardi haughtily. "I spoke to Prince Sovrani."

"Prince Sovrani might well decline to answer you," said Aubrey undauntedly. "Were I to make him acquainted with the fiendish plot you have contrived against his daughter's fame and honour, he would scarcely allow you to cross his threshold!"

Gherardi stood still, breathing quickly, but otherwise unmoved.

"Plot?" he echoed. "You must be mad! I have no plot against anyone. My business is to uphold the cause of truth and justice, and I shall certainly defend the name of the great artist who painted that picture"—and he pointed to Angela's canvas—"Florian Varillo! Dead as he is, his memory shall live!"

"Dead!" cried Prince Sovrani, springing forward. "Dead! Make me sure of that, and I will praise God even for your lying tongue, if it could for once speak such a welcome truth!"

Gherardi drew back amazed, instinctively recoiling from the flashing eyes and threatening figure of the irate nobleman.

"Speak!" cried Sovrani again. "Tell me that the murderer of my child's youth and joy is dead and gone to hell—and I will sing a Laus Deo at St. Peter's! I will pay you a thousand pounds in masses to keep his soul safe with the devil to whom it has gone!"

"Prince Sovrani, you are in ignorance of the facts," said Gherardi coldly. "And you speak in an anger, which if what you suspect were true, would be natural enough, but which under present circumstances is greatly misplaced. The unfortunate Florian Varillo has been ill for many days at a Trappist monastery on the Campagna. He had gone out towards Frascati on a matter connected with some business before starting for Naples, and as he was returning, he was suddenly met by the news of the assassination of his betrothed wife—"

"And he knew nothing of it—" interposed Sovrani grimly. "Of course- -he knew nothing!"

"He knew nothing—how should he know!" responded Gherardi calmly— "The terrible shock threw him into a delirium and fever—he was found in a dead swoon and taken into the monastery for shelter. I saw him there only yesterday."

He paused. No one spoke.

"He was to have come to Rome to-day, and a full explanation of his absence would have been given. But last night the monastery was set on fire—"

"Thank God!" said Sovrani.

Gherardi looked at him with an air of admirably affected sorrowful reproach.

"I grieve for your injustice and cruelty, Prince!" he said—"Some natural regret there should surely be in your mind at the tragic end of one so highly gifted—one whom you had accepted as your future son-in-law. He met with a terrible death! The monastery was set on fire, as I have told you—but the doors had all been previously locked within, it is supposed by one of the monks named Ambrosio, who was subject to fits of insanity—with the tragic result that he and Varillo perished in the flames, there being no possibility of rescue."

"Then the guillotine is saved unnecessary soiling," said Sovrani fiercely. "And you, Monsignor Gherardi, should have a special 'Jubilate' sung for the world being well-rid of an exceptionally damned and damnable villain!"

There was something terrific in the aspect of Sovrani's face and threatening attitude, and for a moment Gherardi hesitated to go on with his prepared sequence of lies. Rallying his forces at last with an effort he made a very good assumption of his most authoritative manner.

"Prince, I must ask you to be good enough to hear me patiently," he said. "Your mind has been grossly abused, and you are not aware of the true position of affairs. You imagine with some few gossips in Rome, that Florian Varillo, your daughter's betrothed husband, was guilty of the murderous attack upon her life—you are mistaken!"

"Mistaken!" Prince Pietro laughed scornfully. "Prove my mistake!— prove it!"

"I give you my word!" said Gherardi. "And I also swear to you that the picture yonder, which, though offensive to the Church and blasphemous in its teaching, is nevertheless a great masterpiece of painting, is the work of the unfortunate dead man you so greatly wrong!"

"Liar!" And Cyrillon Vergniaud sprang forward, interposing himself between Sovrani and the priest. "Liar!"

Gherardi turned a livid white.

"Who is this ruffian?" he demanded, drawing his tall form up more haughtily than before. "A servant of yours?"

"Ay, a servant of his, and of all honest men!" returned Cyrillon. "I am one whom your Church has learned to fear, but who has no fear of you!—one whom you have heard of to your cost, and will still hear of,—Gys Grandit!"

Gherardi glanced him up and down, and then turned from him in disgust as from something infected by a loathly disease.

"Prince Sovrani!" he said. "I cannot condescend to converse with a street ranter, such as this misguided person, who has most regrettably obtained admission to your house and society! I came to see your brother-in-law Cardinal Bonpre,—who has left Rome, you tell me—therefore my business must be discussed with you alone. I must ask you for a private audience."

Sovrani looked at him steadily.

"And I must refuse it, Monsignor! If in private audience you wish to repeat the amazing falsehood you have just uttered respecting my daughter's work—I am afraid I should hardly keep my hands off you! Believe me you are safest in company!"

Monsignor Gherardi paused a moment,—then turned towards Sylvie.

"Contessa," he said very deliberately. "You can perhaps arrange this matter better than I can. Florian Varillo is dead—as I have told you; and for stating what I believe to be the truth regarding him I have been subjected to insult in your presence. I have known you for many years and I knew your father before you,—I have no wish to either distress or offend you,—do you understand? I am in your hands!"

Sylvie looked him full in the face. "My husband will answer you, Monsignor," she said. "I am in his hands!" Gherardi turned as crimson as he had before been pale. "Your husband!" He strode forward with a threatening movement—then stopped short, as he confronted Aubrey Leigh. "Your husband! So! You are married then!"— and he laughed fiercely—"Married by the law, and excommunicated by the Church! A pleasant position for the last of the Hermensteins! Contessa, by your own act you have ruined the fortunes of your friends! I would have held my peace at your will,—but now all Rome shall know the truth!" "The truth according to the convenience of papal Rome?" queried Aubrey Leigh—"The truth, as expounded to the Comtesse Hermenstein in your interview with her yesterday?"

Gherardi looked him over with superb indifference.

"My interview with the Comtesse Hermenstein was a private one"—he said,—"And if a spy was present, he must prove himself a spy. And we of the Church do not accept a spy's testimony!"

White with indignation Aubrey sprang forward,—but Cyrillon Vergniaud restrained him. "Patience!" he said in a low tone—"Let him have his way for the moment—it will then be my turn!"

"My word is law in Rome!"—went on Gherardi—"Whatsoever I choose to say will be confirmed and ratified by the greatest authority in the world—the Pope! I am ready to swear that Florian Varillo painted that picture,—and the Pope is ready to believe it! Who will admit such a masterpiece to be a woman's work? No one! Each member of the house of Sovrani can bear witness to the fact that no one ever saw Angela Sovrani painting it! But I know the whole story—I was the last to see Florian Varillo before his death—and he confessed the truth—that he had worked for his betrothed wife in order to give her the greater fame! So that he was not, and could not have been her assassin—"

"Then her assassin must be found!" said Prince Pietro suddenly. "And the owner of this sheath—the sheath of the dagger with which she was stabbed—must claim his property!" And holding up the sheath in question before Gherardi he continued—

"This I found! This I traced! Varillo's servant admitted it to be his master's—Varillo's mistress recognised it as her lover's—a slight thing, Monsignor!—but an uncomfortable witness! And if you dare to promulgate your lie against my daughter and her work, I will accuse you in the public courts of complicity in an attempted murder! And I doubt whether the Pope will judge it politic, or a part of national diplomacy, to support you then!"

For a moment Gherardi was baffled. His dark brows met in a frown of menace and his lips tightened with his repressed fury. Then,—still managing to speak with the utmost composure, he said,

"You will permit me to look at this dagger-sheath—this proof on which you place so much reliance?"

In the certainty of his triumph, old Sovrani was ready to place it in the priest's extended hand, when young Vergniaud interposed and prevented him.

"No! You can admire it from a distance, Monsignor! You are capable in your present humour of tearing it to atoms and so destroying evidence! As the 'servant' of Prince Sovrani, it is my business to defend him from this possibility!"

Gherardi raised his dark eyes and fixed them, full of bitterest scorn, on the speaker.

"So YOU are Gys Grandit!" he said in accents which thrilled with an intensity of hatred. "You are the busy Socialist, the self- advertising atheist, who, like a yelping cur, barks impotently under the wheels of Rome! You—Vergniaud's bastard—"

"Give that name to your children at Frascati!" cried Cyrillon passionately. "And own them as yours publicly, as my father owned me before he died!"

With a violent start, Gherardi reeled back as though he had been dealt a sudden blow, and over his face came a terrible change, like the grey pallor of creeping paralysis. White to the lips, he struggled for breath . . . he essayed to speak,—then failing, made a gesture with his hands as though pushing away some invisible foe. Slowly his head drooped on his breast, and he shivered like a man struck suddenly with ague. Startled and awed, everyone watched him in fascinated silence. Presently words came slowly and with difficulty between his dry lips.

"You have disgraced me!" he said hoarsely—"Are you satisfied?" He took a step or two close up to the young man. "I ask you—are you satisfied? Or—do you mean to go on—do you want to ruin me?—" Here, moved by uncontrollable passion he threw up his hands with a gesture of despair. "God! That it should come to this! That I should have to ask you—you, the enemy of the Church I serve, for mercy! Let it be enough I say!—and I—I also will be silent!"

Cyrillon looked at him straightly.

"Will you cease to persecute Cardinal Bonpre?" he demanded. "Will you admit Varillo's murderous treachery?"

Gherardi bent his head.

"I will!" he answered slowly, "because I must! Otherwise—" He clenched his fist and his eyes flashed fire-then he went on—"But beware of Lorenzo Moretti! He will depose the Cardinal from office, and separate him from that boy who has affronted the Pope. He is even now soliciting the Holy Father to intervene and stop the marriage of the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein with Aubrey Leigh,—and- -they are married! No more—no more!—I cannot speak—let me go—let me go—you have won your way!—I give you my promise!"

"What is your promise worth?" said Vergniaud with disdain.

"Nothing!" replied Gherardi bitterly. "Only in this one special instance it is worth all my life!—all my position! You—even you, the accursed Gys Grandit!—you have me in your power!"

He raised his head as he said this,—his face expressed mingled agony and fury; but meeting Cyrillon's eyes he shrank again as if he were suddenly whipped by a lash, and with one quick stride, reached the door, and disappeared.

There was a moment's silence after his departure. Then Aubrey Leigh spoke.

"My dear Grandit! You are a marvellous man! How came you to know Gherardi's secrets?"

"Through a section of the Christian-Democratic party here"—replied Cyrillon—"You must not forget that I, like you, have my disciples! They keep me informed of all that goes on in Rome, and they have watched Domenico Gherardi for years. We all know much—but we have little chance to speak! If England knew of Rome what France knows, what Spain knows,—what Italy knows, she would pray to be given a second Cromwell! For the time is coming when she will need him!"



XXXVII.

A few days later the fashionable world of Europe was startled by the announcement of two things. One was the marriage of Sylvie, Countess Hermenstein, to the "would-be reformer of the clergy," Aubrey Leigh, coupled with her renunciation of the Church of her fathers. There was no time for that Church to pronounce excommunication, inasmuch as she renounced it herself, of her own free will and choice, and made no secret of having done so. Some of her Hungarian friends were, or appeared to be, scandalized at this action on her part, but the majority of them treated it with considerable leniency, and in some cases with approval, on the ground that a wife's religion ought to be the same as that of her husband. If love is love at all, it surely means complete union; and one cannot imagine a perfect marriage where there is any possibility of wrangling over different forms of creed. The other piece of news, which created even more sensation than the first, was the purchase of Angela Sovrani's great picture, "The Coming of Christ," by the Americans. As soon as this was known, the crowd of visitors to the artist's studio assumed formidable proportions, and from early morning till late afternoon, the people kept coming and going in hundreds, which gradually swelled to thousands. For by-and-by the history of the picture got about in disjointed morsels of information and gossip which soon formed a consecutive and fairly correct narration. Experts criticized it,—critics "explained" it—and presently nothing was talked of in the art world but "The Coming of Christ" and the artist who painted it, Angela Sovrani. A woman!—only a woman! It seemed incredible—impossible! For why should a woman think? Why should a woman dare to be a genius? It seemed very strange! How much more natural for her to marry some decent man of established position and be content with babies and plain needlework! Here was an abnormal prodigy in the ways of womanhood,—a feminine creature who ventured to give an opinion of her own on something else than dress,—who presumed as it were, to set the world thinking hard on a particular phase of religious history! Then, as one after the other talked and whispered and commented, the story of Angela's own private suffering began to eke out bit by bit,—how she had been brutally stabbed m her own studio in front of her own picture by no other than her own betrothed husband Florian Varillo, who was moved to his murderous act by a sudden impulse of jealousy,—and how that same Varillo had met with his deserts in death by fire in the Trappist monastery on the Campagna. And the excitement over the great picture became more and more intense—especially when it was known that it would soon be taken away from Rome never to be seen there again. Angela herself knew little of her rapidly extending fame,—she was in Paris with the Princesse D'Agramont who had taken her there immediately after Monsignor Gherardi's visit to her father. She was not told of Florian Varillo's death till she had been some days in the French capital, and then it was broken to her as gently as possible. But the result was disastrous. The strength she had slowly regained seemed now to leave her altogether, and she was stricken with a mute despair which was terrible to witness. Hour after hour, she lay on a couch, silent and motionless,—her large eyes fixed on vacancy, her little white hands clasped close together as though in a very extremity of bodily and mental anguish, and the Princesse D'Agramont, who watched her and tended her with the utmost devotion, was often afraid that all her care would be of no avail, and that her patient would slip through her hands into the next world before she had time to even attempt to save her. And Cyrillon Vergmaud, unhappy and restless, wandered up and down outside the house, where this life, so secretly dear to him, was poised as it were on the verge of death, not daring to enter, or even enquire for news, lest he should hear the worst.

One cold dark afternoon however, as he thus paced to and fro, he saw the Princesse D'Agramont at a window beckoning him, and with a sickening terror at his heart, he obeyed the signal.

"I wish you would come and talk to her!" said the Princesse as she greeted him, with tears in her bright eyes. "She must be roused from this apathy. I can do nothing with her. But I think YOU might do much if you would!"

"I will do anything—anything in the wide world!" said Cyrillon earnestly. "Surely you know that!"

"Yes—but you must not be too gentle with her! I do not mean that you should be rough—God forbid!—but if you would speak to her with authority—if you could tell her that she owes her life and her work to the world—to God—"

She broke off, not trusting herself to say more. Cyrillon raised her hand to his lips.

"I understand!" he said. "You know I have hesitated—because—I love her! I cannot tell her not to grieve for her dead betrothed, when I myself am longing to take his place!"

The Princesse smiled through her tears.

"The position is difficult I admit!" she said, with a returning touch of playfulness—"But the very fact of your love for her should give you the force to command her back to life. Come!"

She took him into the darkened room where Angela lay—inert, immovable, with always the same wide-open eyes, blank with misery and desolation, and said gently,

"Angela, will you speak to Gys Grandit?"

Angela turned her wistful looks upon him, and essayed a poor little ghost of a smile. Very gently Cyrillon advanced and sat down beside her,—and with equal gentleness, the Princesse D'Agramont withdrew. Cyrillon's heart beat fast; if he could have lifted that frail little form of a woman into his arms and kissed away the sorrow consuming it, he would have been happy,—but his mission was that of a friend, not lover, and his own emotions made it hard for him to begin. At last he spoke

"When are you going to make up your mind to get well, dear friend?"

She looked at him piteously.

"Make up my mind to get well? I shall never be well again!"

"You will if you resolve to be," said Cyrillon. "It rests with you!"

She was silent.

"Have you heard the latest news from Rome?" he asked after a pause.

She made a faint sign in the negative.

Cyrillon smiled.

"The Church has with all due solemnity anathematized your picture as an inspiration of the Evil One! But it is better that it should be so anathematized than that it should be reported as not your own work. Between two lies, the emissaries of the Vatican have chosen the one least dangerous to themselves."

Angela sighed wearily.

"You do not care?" queried Cyrillon. "Neither anathema nor lie has any effect on you?"

She raised her left hand and looked dreamily at the circlet of rubies on it—Florian Varillo's betrothal ring.

"I care for nothing," she said slowly. "Nothing—now he is gone!"

A bitter pang shot through Cyrillon's heart. He was quite silent. Presently she turned her eyes wistfully towards him.

"Please do not think me ungrateful for all your kindness!—but—I cannot forget!"

"Dear Donna Sovrani, may I speak to you fully and, frankly—as a friend? May I do so without offence?"

She looked at him and saw how pale he was, how his lips trembled, and the consciousness that he was unhappy moved her to a faint sense of compunction.

"Of course you may!" she answered gently. "I know you do not hate me."

"Hate you!" Cyrillon paused, his eyes softening with a great tenderness as they rested upon her. "Who could hate you?"

"Florian hated me," she said. "Not always,—no! He loved me once! Only when he saw my picture, then his love perished. Ah, my Florian! Had I known, I would have destroyed all my work rather than have given him a moment's pain!"

"And would that have been right?" asked Cyrillon earnestly. "Would not such an act have been one of selfishness rather than sacrifice?"

A faint color crept over her pale cheeks.

"Selfishness?—"

"Yes! Your love for him was quite a personal matter,—but your work is a message to the world. You would have sacrificed the world for his sake, even though he had murdered you!"

"I would!" she answered, and her eyes shone like stars as she spoke. "The world is nothing to me; love was everything!"

"That is your way of argument," said Cyrillon. "But it is not God's way!"

She was silent, but her looks questioned him.

"Genius like yours," he went on, "is not given to you for yourself alone. You cannot tamper with it, or play with it, for the sake of securing a little more temporal happiness or peace for yourself. Genius is a crown of thorns,—not a wreath of flowers to be worn at a feast of pleasure! You wished your life to be one of love,—God has chosen to make it one of suffering. You say the world is nothing to you,—then my dear friend, God insists that it shall be something to you! Have you the right—I ask you, have you the right to turn away from all your fellow mortals and say—'No—because I have been disappointed in my hope and my love, then I will have nothing to do with life—I will turn away from all who need my help—I will throw back the gifts of God with scorn to the Giver, and do nothing simply because I have lost what I myself specially valued!'"

Her eyes fell beneath his straight clear regard, and she moved restlessly.

"Ah you do not know—you do not understand!" she said. "I am not thinking of myself—indeed I am not! But I feel as if my work—my picture—had killed Florian! I hate myself!—I hate everything I have ever done, or could ever possibly do. I see him night and day in those horrible flames!—Oh God! those cruel flames!—he seems to reproach me,—even to curse me for his death!"

She shuddered and turned her face away. Cyrillon ventured to take her hand.

"That is not like you, dear friend!" he said, his rich voice trembling with the pity he felt for her. "That is not like your brave spirit! You look only at one aspect of grief—you see the darkness of the cloud, but not its brighter side. If I were to say that he whom you loved so greatly has perhaps been taken to save him from even a worse fate, you would be angry with me. You loved him— yes; and whatever he did or attempted to do, even to your injury, you would have loved him still had he lived! That is the angel half of woman's nature. You would have given him your fame had he asked you for it,—you would have pardoned him a thousand times over had he sought your pardon,—you would have worked for him like a slave and been content to die with your genius unrecognized if that would have pleased him. Yes I know! But God saw your heart—and his—and with God alone rests the balance of justice. You must not set yourself in opposition to the law; you,—such a harmonious note in work and life,—must not become a discord!"