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wondered that morning what there might be behind these metal panels

ornamented with big nails. And he did not yet dare to answer the

question, and decide if the new nations thirsting for fraternity and

justice would really find there the religion necessary for the

democracies of to-morrow; for he had not been able to probe things, and

only carried a first impression away with him. But how keen it was, and

how ill it boded for his dreams! A gate of bronze! Yes, a hard,

impregnable gate, so completely shutting the Vatican off from the rest of

the world that nothing new had entered the palace for three hundred

years. Behind that portal the old centuries, as far as the sixteenth,

remained immutable. Time seemed to have stayed its course there for ever;

nothing more stirred; the very costumes of the Swiss Guards, the Noble

Guards, and the prelates themselves were unchanged; and you found

yourself in the world of three hundred years ago, with its etiquette, its

costumes, and its ideas. That the popes in a spirit of haughty protest

should for five and twenty years have voluntarily shut themselves up in

their palace was already regrettable; but this imprisonment of centuries

within the past, within the grooves of tradition, was far more serious

and dangerous. It was all Catholicism which was thus imprisoned, whose

dogmas and sacerdotal organisation were obstinately immobilised. Perhaps,

in spite of its apparent flexibility, Catholicism was really unable to

yield in anything, under peril of being swept away, and therein lay both

its weakness and its strength. And then what a terrible world was there,

how great the pride and ambition, how numerous the hatreds and rivalries!

And how strange the prison, how singular the company assembled behind the

bars--the Crucified by the side of Jupiter Capitolinus, all pagan

antiquity fraternising with the Apostles, all the splendours of the

Renascence surrounding the pastor of the Gospel who reigns in the name of

the humble and the poor!

The sun was sinking, the gentle, luscious sweetness of the Roman evenings

was falling from the limpid heavens, and after that splendid day spent

with Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, the ancients, and the Pope, in the finest

palace of the world, the young priest lingered, distracted, on the Piazza

of St. Peter's.

"Well, you must excuse me, my dear Abbe," concluded Narcisse. "But I will

now confess to you that I suspect my worthy cousin of a fear that he

might compromise himself by meddling in your affair. I shall certainly

see him again, but you will do well not to put too much reliance on him."

It was nearly six o'clock when Pierre got back to the Boccanera mansion.

As a rule, he passed in all modesty down the lane, and entered by the

little side door, a key of which had been given him. But he had that

morning received a letter from M. de la Choue, and desired to communicate

it to Benedetta. So he ascended the grand staircase, and on reaching the

anteroom was surprised to find nobody there. As a rule, whenever the

man-servant went out Victorine installed herself in his place and busied

herself with some needlework. Her chair was there, and Pierre even

noticed some linen which she had left on a little table when probably

summoned elsewhere. Then, as the door of the first reception-room was

ajar, he at last ventured in. It was almost night there already, the

twilight was softly dying away, and all at once the young priest stopped

short, fearing to take another step, for, from the room beyond, the large

yellow _salon_, there came a murmur of feverish, distracted words, ardent

entreaties, fierce panting, a rustling and a shuffling of footsteps. And

suddenly Pierre no longer hesitated, urged on despite himself by the

conviction that the sounds he heard were those of a struggle, and that

some one was hard pressed.

And when he darted into the further room he was stupefied, for Dario was

there, no longer showing the degenerate elegance of the last scion of an

exhausted race, but maddened by the hot, frantic blood of the Boccaneras

which had bubbled up within him. He had clasped Benedetta by the

shoulders in a frenzy of passion and was scorching her face with his hot,

entreating words: "But since you say, my darling, that it is all over,

that your marriage will never be dissolved--oh! why should we be wretched

for ever! Love me as you do love me, and let me love you--let me love

you!"

But the Contessina, with an indescribable expression of tenderness and

suffering on her tearful face, repulsed him with her outstretched arms,

she likewise evincing a fierce energy as she repeated: "No, no; I love

you, but it must not, it must not be."

At that moment, amidst the roar of his despair, Dario became conscious

that some one was entering the room. He turned and gazed at Pierre with

an expression of stupefied insanity, scarce able even to recognise him.

Then he carried his two hands to his face, to his bloodshot eyes and his

cheeks wet with scalding tears, and fled, heaving a terrible,

pain-fraught sigh in which baffled passion mingled with grief and

repentance.

Benedetta seated herself, breathing hard, her strength and courage

wellnigh exhausted. But as Pierre, too much embarrassed to speak, turned

towards the door, she addressed him in a calmer voice: "No, no, Monsieur

l'Abbe, do not go away--sit down, I pray you; I should like to speak to

you for a moment."

He thereupon thought it his duty to account for his sudden entrance, and

explained that he had found the door of the first _salon_ ajar, and that

Victorine was not in the ante-room, though he had seen her work lying on

the table there.

"Yes," exclaimed the Contessina, "Victorine ought to have been there; I

saw her there but a short time ago. And when my poor Dario lost his head

I called her. Why did she not come?" Then, with sudden expansion, leaning

towards Pierre, she continued: "Listen, Monsieur l'Abbe, I will tell you

what happened, for I don't want you to form too bad an opinion of my poor

Dario. It was all in some measure my fault. Last night he asked me for an

appointment here in order that we might have a quiet chat, and as I knew

that my aunt would be absent at this time to-day I told him to come. It

was only natural--wasn't it?--that we should want to see one another and

come to an agreement after the grievous news that my marriage will

probably never be annulled. We suffer too much, and must form a decision.

And so when he came this evening we began to weep and embrace, mingling

our tears together. I kissed him again and again, telling him how I

adored him, how bitterly grieved I was at being the cause of his

sufferings, and how surely I should die of grief at seeing him so

unhappy. Ah! no doubt I did wrong; I ought not to have caught him to my

heart and embraced him as I did, for it maddened him, Monsieur l'Abbe; he

lost his head, and would have made me break my vow to the Blessed

Virgin."

She spoke these words in all tranquillity and simplicity, without sign of

embarrassment, like a young and beautiful woman who is at once sensible

and practical. Then she resumed: "Oh! I know my poor Dario well, but it

does not prevent me from loving him; perhaps, indeed, it only makes me

love him the more. He looks delicate, perhaps rather sickly, but in truth

he is a man of passion. Yes, the old blood of my people bubbles up in

him. I know something of it myself, for when I was a child I sometimes

had fits of angry passion which left me exhausted on the floor, and even

now, when the gusts arise within me, I have to fight against myself and

torture myself in order that I may not act madly. But my poor Dario does

not know how to suffer. He is like a child whose fancies must be

gratified. And yet at bottom he has a good deal of common sense; he waits

for me because he knows that the only real happiness lies with the woman

who adores him."

As Pierre listened he was able to form a more precise idea of the young

prince, of whose character he had hitherto had but a vague perception.

Whilst dying of love for his cousin, Dario had ever been a man of

pleasure. Though he was no doubt very amiable, the basis of his

temperament was none the less egotism. And, in particular, he was unable

to endure suffering; he loathed suffering, ugliness, and poverty, whether

they affected himself or others. Both his flesh and his soul required

gaiety, brilliancy, show, life in the full sunlight. And withal he was

exhausted, with no strength left him but for the idle life he led, so

incapable of thought and will that the idea of joining the new _regime_

had not even occurred to him. Yet he had all the unbounded pride of a

Roman; sagacity--a keen, practical perception of the real--was mingled

with his indolence; while his inveterate love of woman, more frequently

displayed in charm of manner, burst forth at times in attacks of frantic

sensuality.

"After all he is a man," concluded Benedetta in a low voice, "and I must

not ask impossibilities of him." Then, as Pierre gazed at her, his

notions of Italian jealousy quite upset, she exclaimed, aglow with

passionate adoration: "No, no. Situated as we are, I am not jealous. I

know very well that he will always return to me, and that he will be mine

alone whenever I please, whenever it may be possible."

Silence followed; shadows were filling the room, the gilding of the large

pier tables faded away, and infinite melancholy fell from the lofty, dim

ceiling and the old hangings, yellow like autumn leaves. But soon, by

some chance play of the waning light, a painting stood out above the sofa

on which the Contessina was seated. It was the portrait of the beautiful

young girl with the turban--Cassia Boccanera the forerunner, the

_amorosa_ and avengeress. Again was Pierre struck by the portrait's

resemblance to Benedetta, and, thinking aloud, he resumed: "Passion

always proves the stronger; there invariably comes a moment when one

succumbs--"

But Benedetta violently interrupted him: "I! I! Ah! you do not know me; I

would rather die!" And with extraordinary exaltation, all aglow with

love, as if her superstitious faith had fired her passion to ecstasy, she

continued: "I have vowed to the Madonna that I will belong to none but

the man I love, and to him only when he is my husband. And hitherto I

have kept that vow, at the cost of my happiness, and I will keep it

still, even if it cost me my life! Yes, we will die, my poor Dario and I,

if it be necessary; but the holy Virgin has my vow, and the angels shall

not weep in heaven!"

She was all in those words, her nature all simplicity, intricate,

inexplicable though it might seem. She was doubtless swayed by that idea

of human nobility which Christianity has set in renunciation and purity;

a protest, as it were, against eternal matter, against the forces of

Nature, the everlasting fruitfulness of life. But there was more than

this; she reserved herself, like a divine and priceless gift, to be

bestowed on the one being whom her heart had chosen, he who would be her

lord and master when God should have united them in marriage. For her

everything lay in the blessing of the priest, in the religious

solemnisation of matrimony. And thus one understood her long resistance

to Prada, whom she did not love, and her despairing, grievous resistance

to Dario, whom she did love, but who was not her husband. And how

torturing it was for that soul of fire to have to resist her love; how

continual was the combat waged by duty in the Virgin's name against the

wild, passionate blood of her race! Ignorant, indolent though she might

be, she was capable of great fidelity of heart, and, moreover, she was

not given to dreaming: love might have its immaterial charms, but she

desired it complete.

As Pierre looked at her in the dying twilight he seemed to see and

understand her for the first time. The duality of her nature appeared in

her somewhat full, fleshy lips, in her big black eyes, which suggested a

dark, tempestuous night illumined by flashes of lightning, and in the

calm, sensible expression of the rest of her gentle, infantile face. And,

withal, behind those eyes of flame, beneath that pure, candid skin, one

divined the internal tension of a superstitious, proud, and self-willed

woman, who was obstinately intent on reserving herself for her one love.

And Pierre could well understand that she should be adored, that she

should fill the life of the man she chose with passion, and that to his

own eyes she should appear like the younger sister of that lovely, tragic

Cassia who, unwilling to survive the blow that had rendered self-bestowal

impossible, had flung herself into the Tiber, dragging her brother Ercole

and the corpse of her lover Flavio with her.

However, with a gesture of kindly affection Benedetta caught hold of

Pierre's hands. "You have been here a fortnight, Monsieur l'Abbe," said

she, "and I have come to like you very much, for I feel you to be a

friend. If at first you do not understand us, at least pray do not judge

us too severely. Ignorant as I may be, I always strive to act for the

best, I assure you."

Pierre was greatly touched by her affectionate graciousness, and thanked

her whilst for a moment retaining her beautiful hands in his own, for he

also was becoming much attached to her. A fresh dream was carrying him

off, that of educating her, should he have the time, or, at all events,

of not returning home before winning her soul over to his own ideas of

future charity and fraternity. Did not that adorable, unoccupied,

indolent, ignorant creature, who only knew how to defend her love,

personify the Italy of yesterday? The Italy of yesterday, so lovely and

so sleepy, instinct with a dying grace, charming one even in her

drowsiness, and retaining so much mystery in the fathomless depths of her

black, passionate eyes! And what a _role_ would be that of awakening her,

instructing her, winning her over to truth, making her the rejuvenated