face, nothing but the shape
of him, yet the women were sure he made a wistful appeal. Many were
affected; the anxiety to hear him was intense, the squeezing fearful. An
enormous fish-seller from the Lago di Garda, who had come in express,
leaned over La Testolina and ground a braized heel into her toes.
"_Achi!_" whimpered the little laundress; but "Snakes of Purgatory!"
said the other, "what's a toe more or less when Madonna is round the
corner with a blessing for us in her maunch?"

In a rapt silence, with no preface at all, Fra Battista made direct
confession to all his gods (whether remote or throned within the
sanctuary-rail) that he had committed the sin whereof he was accused. A
perceptible shiver of sensation swept over the church, although
everybody in it was sure, before he had uttered a word, what that word
ought to be. Indeed he had never denied it; but not to deny is different
from bold affirmation. The prior, whose avowal had also been tacit,
looked pained: avowals are painful things. The bishop, more used to
avowals, did his best to look shocked; the archdeacon (professionally
enough) thought avowal the most indecent part of an indecent business.
The Dominicans looked at each other, frankly delighted; the Friars Minor
told each other what they had always said. What the people thought can
only be guessed, for the nave was in darkness; but when Battista had
made an end, a shuddering sigh came from a woman far down the church,
and then stopped, hidden in some hasty new movement there which could
not be accounted for. There seemed to be a stampede, a sudden rush to
the side, the surging of some great unsuspected wave, which broke, as
it were, in the midst of the throng, and washed an open space to right
and left. Up in the choir, after the first surge of this wave (which
made every heart beat), all ears heard the long-drawn following
"Ah!"--not fear only, not expectation made real, but rather awe,
expectation shown just. It began low and hollow, ran up to a hiss: then
the silence was such that the cracking of a man's ankle-bone by the door
sounded like a carter's whip to him upon the bishop's throne. In that
deathly state the whole body of people remained breathless, waiting what
was to ensue.

Out of the dark, stealing (it appeared) from the middle of the nave and
floating down the church upon a bodily silence, came a cold voice. Like
a wind from the snow-mountains it came in a thin stream, before which
F