Another ill-suppressed groan escaped from Trenta, and for a moment interrupted the count’s oration.  The miserable cavaliere!  He had, indeed, invoked an explanation, and, cost him what it might, he must abide it.  But he began to think that the explanation had gone too far.  He was sitting there listening to blasphemies.  He was actually imperiling his own soul.  He was horrified as he reflected that he might not obtain absolution when he confessed the awful language which was addressed to him.  Such a risk was really greater than his submission to etiquette exacted.  There were bounds even to that, the aged chamberlain told himself.

Gracious heavens!—­for him, an unquestioning papalino, a sincere believer in papal infallibility and the temporal power—­to hear the Holy Father called a renegade, and his faithful servants stigmatized as dastards!  It was monstrous!

He secretly resolved that, once escaped from No. 4 at the Universo Hotel—­and he wondered that a thunderbolt had not already struck the count dead where he stood—­he would never allow himself to have any further intercourse whatever with him.

“I have been elected,” continued the count, speaking in the same emphatic manner, and in the same distinct and harmonious voice, utterly careless or unobservant of the conflict of feelings under which the cavaliere was struggling—­“head pope, if you please, cavaliere, so to call me.”—­("God forbid!” muttered Trenta.)—­“It makes my analogy the clearer—­I have been elected by thousands of devoted followers.  But my followers are not slaves, nor am I a tyrant.  I have accepted the glorious title of Priest of the People, and nothing—­nothing” the count repeated, vehemently, “shall tempt me from my duty.  I am here at Lucca to establish a mission—­to plant in this fertile soil the sacred banner of freedom—­red as the first streaks of light that lace the eastern heavens; red as the life-blood from which we draw our being.  I am here, under the protection of this glorious banner, to combat the tyranny upon which the church and the throne are based.  Instead of the fetters of the past, binding mankind in loathsome trammels of ignorance—­instead of the darkness that broods over a subjugated world—­of terrors that rend agonized souls with horrible tortures—­I bring peace, freedom, light, progress.  To the base ideal of perpetual tyranny—­both here and hereafter—­I oppose the pure ideal of absolute freedom—­freedom to each separate soul to work out for itself its own innate convictions—­freedom to form its independent destiny.  Freedom in state, freedom in church, freedom in religion, literature, commerce, government—­freedom as boundless as the sunshine that fructifies the teeming earth!  Freedom of thought necessitates freedom in government.  As the soul wings itself toward the light of simple truth, so should the body politic aspire to perfect freedom.  This can only be found in a pure republic; a republic where all men are equal—­where each man lives for the other in living for himself—­where brother cleaves to brother as his own flesh—­family is knit to family—­one, yet many—­one, yet of all nations!”