from within which came, indistinct and muffled, the sound of voices.  Through a rent in the wall, forming a kind of casement, and about ten feet from the ground, the light now broke over the matted and rank soil, embedded, as it were, in vast masses of shade, and streaming through a mouldering portico hard at hand.  The Provencal stood, though he knew it not, on the very place once consecrated by the Temple:  the Portico and the Library of Liberty (the first public library instituted in Rome).  The wall of the ruin was covered with innumerable creepers and wild brushwood, and it required but little agility on the part of Montreal, by the help of these, to raise himself to the height of the aperture, and, concealed by the luxuriant foliage, to gaze within.  He saw a table, lighted with tapers, in the centre of which was a crucifix; a dagger, unsheathed; an open scroll, which the event proved to be of sacred character; and a brazen bowl.  About a hundred men, in cloaks, and with black vizards, stood motionless around; and one, taller than the rest, without disguise or mask—­whose pale brow and stern features seemed by that light yet paler and yet more stern—­appeared to be concluding some address to his companions.

“Yes,” said he, “in the church of the Lateran I will make the last appeal to the people.  Supported by the Vicar of the Pope, myself an officer of the Pontiff, it will be seen that Religion and Liberty—­the heroes and the martyrs—­are united in one cause.  After that time, words are idle; action must begin.  By this crucifix I pledge my faith, on this blade I devote my life, to the regeneration of Rome!  And you (then no need for mask or mantle!), when the solitary trump is heard, when the solitary horseman is seen,—­you, swear to rally round the standard of the Republic, and resist—­with heart and hand, with life and soul, in defiance of death, and in hope of redemption—­the arms of the oppressor!”

“We swear—­we swear!” exclaimed every voice:  and, crowding toward cross and weapon, the tapers were obscured by the intervening throng, and Montreal could not perceive the ceremony, nor hear the muttered formula of the oath:  but he could guess that the rite then common to conspiracies—­and which required each conspirator to shed some drops of his own blood, in token that life itself was devoted to the enterprise—­had not been omitted, when, the group again receding, the same figure as before had addressed the meeting, holding on high the bowl with both hands,—­while from the left arm, which was bared, the blood weltered slowly, and trickled, drop by drop, upon the ground,—­said, in a solemn voice and upturned eyes: