It required but a glance at Father Francesco to see that he was in all respects the opposite of this.  It was evident that he came from one of the higher classes, by that indefinable air of birth and breeding which makes itself felt under every change of costume.  Who he might be, what might have been his past history, what rank he might have borne, what part played in the great warfare of life, was all of course sunk in the oblivion of his religious profession, where, as at the grave, a man laid down name and fame and past history and worldly goods, and took up a coarse garb and a name chosen from the roll of the saints, in sign that the world that had known him should know hint no more.

Imagine a man between thirty and forty, with that round, full, evenly developed head, and those chiselled features, which one sees on ancient busts and coins no less than in the streets of modern Rome.  The checks were sunken and sallow; the large, black, melancholy eyes had a wistful, anxious, penetrative expression, that spoke a stringent, earnest spirit, which, however deep might be the grave in which it lay buried, had not yet found repose.  The long, thin, delicately formed hands were emaciated and bloodless; they clasped with a nervous eagerness a rosary and crucifix of ebony and silver,—­the only mark of luxury that could be discerned in a costume unusually threadbare and squalid.  The whole picture of the man, as he sat there, had it been painted and hung in a gallery, was such as must have stopped every person of a certain amount of sensibility before it with the conviction that behind that strong, melancholy, earnest figure and face lay one of those hidden histories of human passion in which the vivid life of medieval Italy was so fertile.

He was listening to Elsie, as she kneeled, with that easy air of superiority which marks a practised man of the world, yet with a grave attention which showed that her communication had awakened the deepest interest in his mind.  Every few moments he moved slightly in his seat, and interrupted the flow of the narrative by an inquiry concisely put, in tones which, clear and low, had a solemn and severe distinctness, producing, in the still, dusky twilight of the church, an almost ghostly effect.

When the communication was over, he stepped out of the confessional and said to Elsie in parting,—­“My daughter, you have done well to take this in time.  The devices of Satan in our corrupt times are numerous and artful, and they who keep the Lord’s sheep must not sleep.  Before many days I will call and examine the child; meanwhile I approve your course.”

It was curious to see the awe-struck, trembling manner in which old Elsie, generally so intrepid and commanding, stood before this man in his brown rough woollen gown with his corded waist; but she had an instinctive perception of the presence of the man of superior birth no less than a reverence for the man of religion.