the duties of his office with an unctuous grace as something becoming and decorous to be gone through with.  Evidently, he is puzzled and half-contemptuous at the revelations which come through the grating in hoarse whispers from those thin, trembling lips.  That other man, who speaks with the sweat of anguish beaded on his brow, with a mortal pallor on his thin, worn cheeks, is putting questions to the celestial guide within which seem to that guide the ravings of a crazed lunatic; and yet there is a deadly, despairing earnestness in the appeal that makes an indistinct knocking at the door of his heart, for the man is born of woman, and can feel that somehow or other these are the words of a mighty agony.

He addresses him some words of commonplace ghostly comfort, and gives a plenary absolution.  The Capuchin monk rises up and stands meekly wiping the sweat from his brow, the churchman leaves his box, and they meet face to face, when each starts, seeing in the other the apparition of a once well-known countenance.

“What!  Lorenzo Sforza!” said the churchman.  “Who would have thought it?  Don’t you remember me?”

“Not Lorenzo Sforza,” said the other, a hectic brilliancy flushing his pale cheek; “that name is buried in the tomb of his fathers; he you speak to knows it no more.  The unworthy Brother Francesco, deserving nothing of God or man, is before you.”

“Oh, come, come!” said the other, grasping his hand in spite of his resistance; “that is all proper enough in its place; but between friends, you know, what’s the use?  It’s lucky we have you here now; we want one of your family to send on a mission to Florence, and talk a little reason into the citizens and the Signoria.  Come right away with me to the Pope.”

“Brother, in God’s name let me go!  I have no mission to the great of this world; and I cannot remember or be called by the name of other days, or salute kinsman or acquaintance after the flesh, without a breach of vows.”

“Poh, poh! you are nervous, dyspeptic; you don’t understand things.  Don’t you see you are where vows can be bound and loosed?  Come along, and let us wake you out of this nightmare.  Such a pother about a pretty peasant-girl!  One of your rank and taste, too!  I warrant me the little sinner practised on you at the confessional.  I know their ways, the whole of them; but you mourn over it in a way that is perfectly incomprehensible.  If you had tripped a little,—­paid a compliment, or taken a liberty or two,—­it would have been only natural; but this desperation, when you have resisted like Saint Anthony himself, shows your nerves are out of order and you need change.”

“For God’s sake, brother, tempt me not!” said Father Francesco, wrenching himself away, with such a haggard and insane vehemence as quite to discompose the churchman; and drawing his cowl over his face, he glided swiftly down a side-aisle and out the door.

The churchman was too easy-going to risk the fatigue of a scuffle with a man whom he considered as a monomaniac; but he stepped smoothly and stealthily after him and watched him go out.