ed the Pere.

'That once engaged in a cause, your energies would be wholly with it, so
long as you directed and guided it; that he had known men of your
stamp in France during the Revolution, and that the strength of their
convictions was more often a source of weakness than of power.'

'It was from Gabriel Riquetti that he stole the remark. It was even thus
Mirabeau spoke of our order.'

'You must be right, reverend father, for he continued to talk much of
this same Riquetti, saying that he alone, of all Europe, could have
restored the Stuarts to England. "Had we one such man as that," said he,
"I now had been lying in Holy rood Palace."'

'He was mistaken there,' muttered Massoni half aloud. 'The men who are
without faith raise no lasting edifices. How strange,' added he aloud,
'that the Prince should have spoken in this wise. When I have been with
him he was ever wandering, uncertain, incoherent.'

'And into this state he gradually lapsed, singing snatches of peasant
songs to himself, and mingling Scottish rhymes with Alfieri's verses;
sometimes fancying himself in all the wild conflict of a street-fight in
Paris, and then thinking that he was strolling along a river's bank with
some one that he loved.'

'Has he then loved?' asked Massoni in a low, distinct voice.

'From chance words that have escaped him in his wanderings I have
gathered as much, though who she was and whence, or what her station in
life, I cannot guess.'

'She will tell us this,' muttered the Pere to himself; and then turning
to Giacomo said, 'To-morrow, at noon, that woman they call the Egyptian
Princess is to be here; she is to come in secret to see him. The Prince
of Piombino has arranged it all, and says that her marvellous gift is
never in fault, all hearts being open to her as a printed page, and
men's inmost thoughts as legible as their features.'

'Is it an evil possession?' asked Giacomo tremblingly.

'Who can dare to say so? Let us wait and watch. Take care that the small
door that opens from the garden upon the Pincian be left ajar, as she
will come by that way; and let there be none to observe or note her
coming. You will yourself meet her at the gate, and conduct her to his
chamber--where leave her.'

'If Rome should hear that we have accepted such aid----'

A gesture of haughty contempt from the Pere interrupted the speech, and
Massoni said--

'Are not they with troubled consciences frequent visitors at our
shrines? Mi