is sent for in haste to visit the bedside of the Prior, who has
long been sick and failing, and who gladly embraces this opportunity to
make his last confession to a man of such reputed sanctity in his order
as Father Francesco. For the acute Father Johannes, casting about for
various means to empty the Superior's chair at Sorrento, for his own
benefit, and despairing of any occasion of slanderous accusation, had
taken the other tack of writing to Rome extravagant laudations of such
feats of penance and saintship in his Superior as in the view of all the
brothers required that such a light should no more be hidden in an
obscure province, but be set on a Roman candlestick, where it might give
light to the faithful in all parts of the world. Thus two currents of
worldly intrigue were uniting to push an unworldly man to a higher
dignity than he either sought or desired.

When a man has a sensitive or sore spot in his heart, from the pain of
which he would gladly flee to the ends of the earth, it is marvellous
what coincidences of events will be found to press upon it wherever he
may go. Singularly enough, one of the first items in the confession of
the Capuchin Superior related to Agnes, and his story was in substance
as follows. In his youth he had been induced by the persuasions of the
young son of a great and powerful family to unite him in the holy
sacrament of marriage with a _protegee_ of his mother's; but the
marriage being detected, it was disavowed by the young nobleman, and the
girl and her mother chased out ignominiously, so that she died in great
misery. For his complicity in this sin the conscience of the monk had
often troubled him, and he had kept track of the child she left,
thinking perhaps some day to make reparation by declaring the true
marriage of her mother, which now he certified upon the holy cross, and
charged Father Francesco to make known to one of that kin whom he named.
He further informed him, that this family, having fallen under the
displeasure of the Pope and his son, Caesar Borgia, had been banished
from the city, and their property confiscated, so that there was none of
them to be found thereabouts except an aged widowed sister, who, having
married into a family in favor with the Pope, was allowed to retain her
possessions, and now resided in a villa near Rome, where she lived
retired, devoting her whole life to works of piety. The old man
therefore conjured Father Francesco to lose no ti