And now, through the golden air, the Ave Maria is sounding from the convent-bells, and answered by a thousand tones and echoes from the churches of the old town, and all Christendom gives a moment’s adoring pause to celebrate the moment when an angel addressed to a mortal maiden words that had been wept and prayed for during thousands of years.  Dimly they sounded through his ear, in that half-deadly trance,—­not with plaintive sweetness and motherly tenderness, but like notes of doom and vengeance.  He felt rebellious impulses within, which rose up in hatred against them, and all that recalled to his mind the faith which seemed a tyranny, and the vows which appeared to him such a hopeless and miserable failure.

But now there came other sounds nearer and more earthly.  His quickened senses perceive a busy patter of sandalled feet outside his cell, and a whispering of consultation,—­and then the silvery, snaky tones of Father Johannes, which had that oily, penetrative quality which passes through all substances with such distinctness.

“Brethren,” he said, “I feel bound in conscience to knock.  Our blessed Superior carries his mortifications altogether too far.  His faithful sons must beset him with filial inquiries.”

The condition in which Father Francesco was lying, like many abnormal states of extreme exhaustion, seemed to be attended with a mysterious quickening of the magnetic forces and intuitive perceptions.  He felt the hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like the suppressed hiss of a deadly serpent.  He had always suspected that this man hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with his stealthy-tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation, to read the very inmost secrets of his heart.  He knew that he longed for nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and to reign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defence roused him.  He started up as one starts from a dream, waked by a whisper in the ear, and, raising himself on his elbow, looked towards the door.

A cautious rap was heard, and then a pause.  Father Francesco smiled with a peculiar and bitter expression.  The rap became louder, more energetic, stormy at last, intermingled with vehement calls on his name.

Father Francesco rose at length, settled his garments, passed his hands over his brow, and then, composing himself to an expression of deliberate gravity, opened the door and stood before them.

“Holy father,” said Father Johannes, “the hearts of your sons have been saddened.  A whole day have you withdrawn your presence from our devotions.  We feared you might have fainted, your pious austerities so often transcend the powers of Nature.”

“I grieve to have saddened the hearts of such affectionate sons,” said the Superior, fixing his eye keenly on Father Johannes; “but I have been performing a peculiar office of prayer to-day for a soul in deadly peril, and have been so absorbed therein that I have known nothing that passed.  There is a soul among us, brethren,” he added, “that stands at this moment so near to damnation that even the most blessed Mother of God is in doubt for its salvation, and whether it can be saved at all God only knows.”