This was a spring.  He pressed it, and the upper and lower parts of the cross came asunder; and holding the top like a handle, I drew out as from a scabbard a sharp steel blade, concealed in the thickness of the wood, behind the very body of the agonising Christ.  What had been a crucifix became a deadly poniard in my grasp, and the rust upon it in the twilight looked like blood.  ‘I have often wondered,’ said Signor Folcioni, ‘that the Frati cared to sell me this.’

There is no need to raise the question of the genuineness of this strange relic, though I confess to having had my doubts about it, or to wonder for what nefarious purposes the impious weapon was designed—­whether the blade was inserted by some rascal monk who never told the tale, or whether it was used on secret service by the friars.  On its surface the infernal engine carries a dark certainty of treason, sacrilege, and violence.  Yet it would be wrong to incriminate the Order of S. Francis by any suspicion, and idle to seek the actual history of this mysterious weapon.  A writer of fiction could indeed produce some dark tale in the style of De Stendhal’s ‘Nouvelles,’ and christen it ‘The Crucifix of Crema.’  And how delighted would Webster have been if he had chanced to hear of such a sword-sheath!  He might have placed it in the hands of Bosola for the keener torment of his Duchess.  Flamineo might have used it; or the disguised friars, who made the deathbed of Bracciano hideous, might have plunged it in the Duke’s heart after mocking his eyes with the figure of the suffering Christ.  To imagine such an instrument of moral terror mingled with material violence, lay within the scope of Webster’s sinister and powerful genius.  But unless he had seen it with his eyes, what poet would have ventured to devise the thing and display it even in the dumb show of a tragedy?  Fact is more wonderful than romance.  No apocalypse of Antichrist matches what is told of Roderigo Borgia; and the crucifix of Crema exceeds the sombre fantasy of Webster.

Whatever may be the truth about this cross, it has at any rate the value of a symbol or a metaphor.  The idea which it materialises, the historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention.  A sword concealed in the crucifix—­what emblem brings more forcibly to mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain destitute of men?  Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the coasts of Africa and Italy.  The Spaniards enter Mexico; and this is the cross they carry in their hands.  They take possession of Peru; and while the gentle people of the Incas come to kiss the bleeding brows of Christ, they plunge this dagger in their sides.  What, again, was the temporal power of the Papacy but a sword embedded in a cross?  Each Papa Re, when he ascended the Holy Chair, was forced to take the