“The life eternal, Lorenzo!” said Ganganelli.  “This letter confirms my suppositions!  Brunelli is a man of honor, and he has told me the truth.  Lorenzo, would you know what signifies this consuming fire, this weariness and relaxation of my limbs?  It is the effect of Acqua Tofana!”

“Oh, my God,” shrieked Lorenzo, “you are poisoned!”

“Irretrievably,” calmly responded the pope; “Brunelli says it, and I feel in my burning entrails that he speaks the truth.”

“And are there no remedies?” lamented Lorenzo, wringing his hands.  “No means at least of prolonging your life?”

“There is such a means; and Brunelli recommends it.  The application of the greatest possible heat, the production of a continual perspiration, which may a little retard the progress of the evil, and perhaps prolong my life for a few weeks!

“Lorenzo, it is my duty to struggle every day with death.  I have yet much to complete before I die, yet much labor before I go to my eternal rest, and, as far as I can, I must bring to an end what I have commenced for the welfare of my people!  Come, Lorenzo, let us return to the Vatican; set pans of coals in my room, procure me furs and a glowing hot sun!  I would yet live some weeks!”

With feverish impetuosity Ganganelli grasped Lorenzo’s arm and drew him away.  Then, suddenly stopping, he turned toward his favorite place.

“Lorenzo,” he said in a low tone, and with deep sadness, “it was yet very pleasant in the Franciscan cloister.  Why did we not remain there?  Only see, my friend, how beautifully the sun glitters there among the pines, and how delightfully this air fans us!  Ah, Lorenzo, this world is so beautiful, so very beautiful!  Why must I leave it so soon?”

Lorenzo made no answer; he could not speak for tears.

Ganganelli cast a long and silent glance around him, greeting with his eyes the trees and flowers, the green earth and the blue sky.

“Farewell, farewell, thou beautiful Nature!” he whispered low.  “We take our leave of each other.  I shall never again see these trees or this grassy seat.  But you, Lorenzo, will I establish as the guardian of this place, and when you sometimes sit here in the still evening hour, then will you think of me!  Now come, we must away.  Feel you not this cool and gentle air?  Oh, how refreshingly it fans and cools, but I dare not enjoy it—­not I!  This cooling cuts off a day from my life!”

And with the haste of a youth, Ganganelli ran down the alley.  Bathed with perspiration, breathless with heat, he arrived at the palace.

“Now give me furs, bring pans of coals, Lorenzo, shut all the doors and windows.  Procure me a heat that will shut out death—!”

But death nevertheless came; the furs and coverings, the steaming coal-pans with which the pope surrounded himself, the glowing atmosphere he day and night inhaled, and which quite prostrated his friends and servants, all that could only keep off death for some few weeks, not drive it away.  More dreadful yet than this blasting heat with which Ganganelli surrounded himself, yet more horrible, was the fire that consumed his entrails and burned in his blood.