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 G.o.d 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,--G.o.d!" 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 G.o.d,--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.

"G.o.d," 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 a.s.sent, 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 G.o.d,--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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sumed when he had anything to hide.

"It has neither point nor meaning."

"You think not?" said Ambrosio. "But perhaps you are not conscious of G.o.d. 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 Ambros...o...b..gan 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 G.o.d not to look at our sins,--not to uncover them and show us what vile souls we are--we men who could be as G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds!" 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 m.u.f.fled 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 a.s.sa.s.sin!"

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 a.s.sert 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.

"G.o.d!" 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 inst.i.tution! Like charity, it covers a mult.i.tude 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?"