For thence, in his lone night-watches,
    By moon or starlight dim,
  A face full of love and pity
    And tenderness looked on him. 
  And oft, as the grieving presence
    Sat in his mother’s chair,
  The groan of his self-upbraiding
    Grew into wordless prayer.

  At last, in the moonless midnight,
    The summoning angel came,
  Severe in his pity, touching
    The house with fingers of flame.

  The red light flashed from its windows
    And flared from its sinking roof;
  And baffled and awed before it,
    The villagers stood aloof.

  They shrank from the falling rafters,
    They turned from the furnace-glare;
  But its tenant cried, “God help me! 
    I must save my mother’s chair.”

  Under the blazing portal,
    Over the floor of fire,
  He seemed, in the terrible splendor,
    A martyr on his pyre!

  In his face the mad flames smote him
    And stung him on either side;
  But he clung to the sacred relic,—­
    By his mother’s chair he died!

  O mother, with human yearnings! 
    O saint, by the altar-stairs! 
  Shall not the dear God give thee
    The child of thy many prayers?

  O Christ! by whom the loving,
    Though erring, are forgiven,
  Hast Thou for him no refuge,
    No quiet place in heaven?

  Give palms to Thy strong martyrs,
    And crown Thy saints with gold,
  But let the mother welcome
    Her lost one to Thy fold!

AGNES OF SORRENTO.

CHAPTER XVI.

ELSIE PUSHES HER SCHEME.

The good Father Antonio returned from his conference with the cavalier with many subjects for grave pondering.  This man, as he conjectured, so far from being an enemy either of Church or State, was in fact in many respects in the same position with his revered master,—­as nearly so as the position of a layman was likely to resemble that of an ecclesiastic.  His denial of the Visible Church, as represented by the Pope and Cardinals, sprang not from an irreverent, but from a reverent spirit.  To accept them as exponents of Christ and Christianity was to blaspheme and traduce both, and therefore he only could be counted in the highest degree Christian who stood most completely opposed to them in spirit and practice.

His kind and fatherly heart was interested in the brave young nobleman.  He sympathized fully with the situation in which he stood, and he even wished success to his love; but then how was he to help him with Agnes, and above all with her old grandmother, without entering on the awful task of condemning and exposing that sacred authority which all the Church had so many years been taught to regard as infallibly inspired?  Long had all the truly spiritual members of the Church who gave ear to the teachings of Savonarola felt that the nearer they followed Christ the more open was their growing antagonism to the Pope and the Cardinals; but still they hung back from the responsibility of inviting the people to an open revolt.