of a town. Monsignor Nani was there, in company with
the two French ladies, the mother and the daughter, both looking very
happy and highly amused. No doubt the prelate had good-naturedly offered
to conduct them to the dome. However, as soon as he recognised the young
priest he went towards him: "Well, my dear son," he inquired, "are you
pleased? Have you been impressed, edified?" As he spoke, his searching
eyes dived into Pierre's soul, as if to ascertain the present result of
his experiments. Then, satisfied with what he detected, he began to laugh
softly: "Yes, yes, I see--come, you are a sensible fellow after all. I
begin to think that the unfortunate affair which brought you here will
have a happy ending."

VIII.

WHEN Pierre remained in the morning at the Boccanera mansion he often
spent some hours in the little neglected garden which had formerly ended
with a sort of colonnaded _loggia_, whence two flights of steps descended
to the Tiber. This garden was a delightful, solitary nook, perfumed by
the ripe fruit of the centenarian orange-trees, whose symmetrical lines
were the only indication of the former pathways, now hidden beneath rank
weeds. And Pierre also found there the acrid scent of the large
box-shrubs growing in the old central fountain basin, which had been
filled up with loose earth and rubbish.

On those luminous October mornings, full of such tender and penetrating
charm, the spot was one where all the joy of living might well be
savoured, but Pierre brought thither his northern dreaminess, his concern
for suffering, his steadfast feeling of compassion, which rendered yet
sweeter the caress of the sunlight pervading that atmosphere of love. He
seated himself against the right-hand wall on a fragment of a fallen
column over which a huge laurel cast a deep-black shadow, fresh and
aromatic. In the antique greenish sarcophagus beside him, on which fauns
offered violence to nymphs, the streamlet of water trickling from the
mask incrusted in the wall, set the unchanging music of its crystal note,
whilst he read the newspapers and the letters which he received, all the
communications of good Abbe Rose, who kept him informed of his mission
among the wretched ones of gloomy Paris, now already steeped in fog and
mud.

One morning however, Pierre unexpectedly found Benedetta seated on the
fallen column which he usually made his chair. She raised a light cry of
surprise on seeing him, and for a moment