he knew that
his words were poured on her ear as uselessly as water on a stone floor.
She was in a manner grateful to him as her friend, in a manner afraid of
that vague majesty of some unknown power which he represented to her;
but she hated her husband, she adored her lover: he could not stir her
from those two extremes of passion. He left her with apprehension and a
pained sense of his own impotence. She promised him that she would
provoke Tassilo no more that night, and this poor promise was all that
he could wring from her. It was late when he left the mill-house. He
feared Candida would be alarmed at his unusual absence, and hastened,
with trouble on his soul, towards the village, lying white and lonely
underneath the midsummer moon. He had so little influence, so slender a
power to persuade or warn, to counsel or command; he felt afraid that he
was unworthy of his calling.

"I should have been better in the cloister," he thought, sadly: "I have
not the key to human hearts."

He went on through a starry world of fire-flies making luminous the
still-uncut corn, and, entering his presbytery, crept noiselessly up the
stairs to his chamber, thankful that the voice of his housekeeper did
not cry to him out of the darkness to know why he had so long tarried.
He slept little that night, and was up, as was his wont, by daybreak. It
was still dark when the church-bell was clanging above his head for the
first office.

It was the day of St. Peter and of St. Paul. Few people came to the
early mass,--some peasants who wanted to have the rest of the day clear,
some women, thrifty housewives who were up betimes, Candida herself; no
others. The lovely morning light streamed in, cool and roseate; there
were a few lilies and roses on the altar; some red draperies floated in
the door-way; the nightingales in the wild-rose hedge sang all the
while, their sweet voices crossing the monotonous Latin recitatives. The
mass was just over when into the church from without there arose a
strange sound, shrill and yet hoarse, inarticulate and yet uproarious:
it came from the throats of many people, all screaming and shouting and
talking and swearing together. The peasants and the women who were on
their knees scrambled to their feet and rushed to the door, thinking the
earth had opened and the houses were falling. Gesualdo came down from
the altar and strove to calm them, but they did not heed him, and he
followed them despite himself. Th