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slim phantoms ever on the move, lent a voice to the silence, the endless

murmur of a plaint of sorrow coming one knew not whence. Ah! how great

was the melancholy grandeur of that slumber, that famous square, the

Vatican and St. Peter's, thus seen by night when wrapped in silence and

darkness! But suddenly the clock struck ten with so slow and loud a chime

that never, so it seemed, had more solemn and decisive an hour rung out

amidst blacker and more unfathomable gloom. All Pierre's poor weary frame

quivered at the sound as he stood motionless in the centre of the

expanse. What! had he spent barely three-quarters of an hour, chatting up

yonder with that white old man who had just wrenched all his soul away

from him! Yes, it was the final wrench; his last belief had been torn

from his bleeding heart and brain. The supreme experiment had been made,

a world had collapsed within him. And all at once he thought of Monsignor

Nani, and reflected that he alone had been right. He, Pierre, had been

told that in any case he would end by doing what Monsignor Nani might

desire, and he was now stupefied to find that he had done so.

But sudden despair seized upon him, such atrocious distress of spirit

that, from the depths of the abyss of darkness where he stood, he raised

his quivering arms into space and spoke aloud: "No, no, Thou art not

here, O God of life and love, O God of Salvation! But come, appear since

Thy children are perishing because they know neither who Thou art, nor

where to find Thee amidst the Infinite of the worlds!"

Above the vast square spread the vast sky of dark-blue velvet, the silent

disturbing Infinite, where the constellations palpitated. Over the roofs

of the Vatican, Charles's Wain seemed yet more tilted, its golden wheels

straying from the right path, its golden shaft upreared in the air;

whilst yonder, over Rome towards the Via Giulia, Orion was about to

disappear and already showed but one of the three golden stars which

bedecked his belt.

XV.

IT was nearly daybreak when Pierre fell asleep, exhausted by emotion and

hot with fever. And at nine o'clock, when he had risen and breakfasted,

he at once wished to go down into Cardinal Boccanera's rooms where the

bodies of Dario and Benedetta had been laid in state in order that the

members of the family, its friends and clients, might bring them their

tears and prayers.

Whilst he breakfasted, Victorine who, showing an active bravery amidst

her despair, had not been to bed at all, told him of what had taken place

in the house during the night and early morning. Donna Serafina, prude

that she was, had again made an attempt to have the bodies separated; but

this had proved an impossibility, as _rigor mortis_ had set in, and to

part the lovers it would have been necessary to break their limbs.

Moreover, the Cardinal, who had interposed once before, almost quarrelled

with his sister on the subject, unwilling as he was that any one should

disturb the lovers' last slumber, their union of eternity. Beneath his

priestly garb there coursed the blood of his race, a pride in the

passions of former times; and he remarked that if the family counted two

popes among its forerunners, it had also been rendered illustrious by

great captains and ardent lovers. Never would he allow any one to touch

those two children, whose dolorous lives had been so pure and whom the

grave alone had united. He was the master in his house, and they should

be sewn together in the same shroud, and nailed together in the same

coffin. Then too the religious service should take place at the

neighbouring church of San Carlo, of which he was Cardinal-priest and

where again he was the master. And if needful he would address himself to

the Pope. And such being his sovereign will, so authoritatively

expressed, everybody in the house had to bow submissively.

Donna Serafina at once occupied herself with the laying-out. According to

the Roman custom the servants were present, and Victorine as the oldest

and most appreciated of them, assisted the relatives. All that could be

done in the first instance was to envelop both corpses in Benedetta's

unbound hair, thick and odorous hair, which spread out into a royal

mantle; and they were then laid together in one shroud of white silk,

fastened about their necks in such wise that they formed but one being in

death. And again the Cardinal imperatively ordered that they should be

brought into his apartments and placed on a state bed in the centre of

the throne-room, so that a supreme homage might be rendered to them as to

the last scions of the name, the two tragic lovers with whom the once

resounding glory of the Boccaneras was about to return to earth. The

story which had been arranged was already circulating through Rome; folks

related how Dario had been carried off in a few hours by infectious

fever, and how Benedetta, maddened by grief, had expired whilst clasping

him in her arms to bid him a last farewell; and there was talk too of the

royal honours which the bodies were to receive, the superb funeral

nuptials which were to be accorded them as they lay clasped on their bed

of eternal rest. All Rome, quite overcome by this tragic story of love

and death, would talk of nothing else for several weeks.

Pierre would have started for France that same night, eager as he was to

quit the city of disaster where he had lost the last shreds of his faith,

but he desired to attend the obsequies, and therefore postponed his

departure until the following evening. And thus he would spend one more

day in that old crumbling palace, near the corpse of that unhappy young

woman to whom he had been so much attached and for whom he would try to

find some prayers in the depths of his empty and lacerated heart.

When he reached the threshold of the Cardinal's reception-rooms, he

suddenly remembered his first visit to them. They still presented the

same aspect of ancient princely pomp falling into decay and dust. The

doors of the three large ante-rooms were wide open, and the rooms

themselves were at that early hour still empty. In the first one, the

servants' anteroom, there was nobody but Giacomo who stood motionless in

his black livery in front of the old red hat hanging under the

_baldacchino_ where spiders spun their webs between the crumbling

tassels. In the second room, which the secretary formerly had occupied,

Abbe Paparelli, the train-bearer, was softly walking up and down whilst

waiting for visitors; and with his conquering humility, his all-powerful

obsequiousness, he had never before so closely resembled an old maid,

whitened and wrinkled by excess of devout observances. Finally, in the

third ante-room, the _anticamera nobile_, where the red cap lay on a

credence facing the large imperious portrait of the Cardinal in

ceremonial costume, there was Don Vigilio who had left his little

work-table to station himself at the door of the throne-room and there

bow to those who crossed the threshold. And on that gloomy winter morning

the rooms appeared more mournful and dilapidated than ever, the hangings

frayed and ragged, the few articles of furniture covered with dust, the

old wood-work crumbling beneath the continuous onslaught of worms, and

the ceilings alone retaining their pompous show of gilding and painting.

However, Pierre, to whom Abbe Paparelli addressed a profound bow, in

which one divined the irony of a sort of dismissal given to one who was

vanquished, felt more impressed by the mournful grandeur which those

three dilapidated rooms presented that day, conducting as they did to the

old throne-room, now a chamber of death, where the two last children of

the house slept their last sleep. What a superb and sorrowful _gala_ of

death! Every door wide open and all the emptiness of those over-spacious

rooms, void of the throngs of ancient days and leading to the supreme

affliction--the end of a race! The Cardinal had shut himself up in his

little work-room where he received the relatives and intimates who

desired to present their condolences to him, whilst Donna Serafina had

chosen an adjoining apartment to await her lady friends who would come in

procession until evening. And Pierre, informed of the ceremonial by

Victorine, had in the first place to enter the throne-room, greeted as he

passed by a deep bow from Don Vigilio who, pale and silent, did not seem

to recognise him.

A surprise awaited the young priest. He had expected such a

lying-in-state as is seen in France and elsewhere, all windows closed so

as to steep the room in night, and hundreds of candles burning round a

_catafalco_, whilst from ceiling to floor the walls were hung with black

drapery. He had been told that the bodies would lie in the throne-room

because the antique chapel on the ground floor of the palazzo had been

shut up for half a century and was in no condition to be used, whilst the

Cardinal's little private chapel was altogether too small for any such

ceremony. And thus it had been necessary to improvise an altar in the

throne-room, an altar at which masses had been said ever since dawn.

Masses and other religious services were moreover to be celebrated all

day long in the private chapel; and two additional altars had even been

set up, one in a small room adjoining the _anticamera nobile_ and the

other in a sort of alcove communicating with the second anteroom: and in

this wise priests, Franciscans, and members of other Orders bound by the

vow of poverty, would simultaneously and without intermission celebrate

the divine sacrifice on those four altars. The Cardinal, indeed, had

desired that the Divine Blood should flow without pause under his roof

for the redemption of those two dear souls which had flown away together.

And thus in that mourning mansion, through those funeral halls the bells

scarcely stopped tinkling for the elevation of the host, whilst the

quivering murmur of Latin words ever continued, and consecrated wafers

were continually broken and chalices drained, in such wise that the

Divine Presence could not for a moment quit the heavy atmosphere all

redolent of death.

On the other hand, however, Pierre, to his great astonishment, found the

throne-room much as it had been on the day of his first visit. The

curtains of the four large windows had not even been drawn, and the grey,

cold, subdued light of the gloomy winter morning freely entered. Under

the ceiling of carved and gilded wood-work there were the customary red

wall-hangings of _brocatelle_, worn away by long usage; and there was the

old throne with the arm-chair turned to the wall, uselessly waiting for a

visit from the Pope which would never more come. The principal changes in

the aspect of the room were that its seats and tables had been removed,

and that, in addition to the improvised altar arranged beside the throne,

it now contained the state bed on which lay the bodies of Benedetta and

Dario, amidst a profusion of flowers. The bed stood in the centre of the

room on a low platform, and at its head were two lighted candles, one on

either side. There was nothing else, nothing but that wealth of flowers,

such a harvest of white roses that one wondered in what fairy garden they

had been culled, sheaves of them on the bed, sheaves of them toppling

from the bed, sheaves of them covering the step of the platform, and

falling from that step on to the magnificent marble paving of the room.

Pierre drew near to the bed, his heart faint with emotion. Those tapers

whose little yellow flamelets scarcely showed in the pale daylight, that

continuous low murmur of the mass being said at the altar, that

penetrating perfume of roses which rendered the atmosphere so heavy,

filled the antiquated, dusty room with a spirit of infinite woe, a

lamentation of boundless mourning. And there was not a gesture, not a

word spoken, save by the priest officiating at the altar, nothing but an

occasional faint sound of stifled sobbing among the few persons present.

Servants of the house constantly relieved one another, four always

standing erect and motionless at the head of the bed, like faithful,

familiar guards. From time to time Consistorial-Advocate Morano who,

since early morning had been attending to everything, crossed the room

with a silent step and the air of a man in a hurry. And at the edge of

the platform all who entered, knelt, prayed, and wept. Pierre perceived

three ladies there, their faces hidden by their handkerchiefs; and there

was also an old priest who trembled with grief and hung his head in such

wise that his face could not be distinguished. However, the young man was

most moved by the sight of a poorly clad girl, whom he took for a

servant, and whom sorrow had utterly prostrated on the marble slabs.

Then in his turn he knelt down, and with the professional murmur of the

lips sought to repeat the Latin prayers which, as a priest, he had so

often said at the bedside of the departed. But his growing emotion

confused his memory, and he became wrapt in contemplation of the lovers

whom his eyes were unable to quit. Under the wealth of flowers which

covered them the clasped bodies could scarcely be distinguished, but the

two heads emerged from the silken shroud, and lying there on the same

cushion, with their hair mingling, they were still beautiful, beautiful

as with satisfied passion. Benedetta had kept her divinely gay, loving,

and faithful face for eternity, transported with rapture at having

rendered up her last breath in a kiss of love; whilst Dario retained a

more dolorous expression amidst his final joy. And their eyes were still

wide open, gazing at one another with a persistent and caressing

sweetness which nothing would ever more disturb.

Oh! God, was it true that yonder lay that Benedetta whom he, Pierre, had

loved with such pure, brotherly affection? He was stirred to the very

depths of his soul by the recollection of the delightful hours which he

had spent with her. She had been so beautiful, so sensible, yet so full

of passion! And he had indulged in so beautiful a dream, that of

animating with his own liberating fraternal feelings that admirable