“What is the matter, Donatello?” whispered Miriam soothingly.  “You are quite in a tremble, my poor friend!  What is it?”

“This awful chant from beneath the church,” answered Donatello; “it oppresses me; the air is so heavy with it that I can scarcely draw my breath.  And yonder dead monk!  I feel as if he were lying right across my heart.”

“Take courage!” whispered she again “come, we will approach close to the dead monk.  The only way, in such cases, is to stare the ugly horror right in the face; never a sidelong glance, nor half-look, for those are what show a frightfull thing in its frightfullest aspect.  Lean on me, dearest friend!  My heart is very strong for both of us.  Be brave; and all is well.”

Donatello hung back for a moment, but then pressed close to Miriam’s side, and suffered her to lead him up to the bier.  The sculptor followed.  A number of persons, chiefly women, with several children among them, were standing about the corpse; and as our three friends drew nigh, a mother knelt down, and caused her little boy to kneel, both kissing the beads and crucifix that hung from the monk’s girdle.  Possibly he had died in the odor of sanctity; or, at all events, death and his brown frock and cowl made a sacred image of this reverend father.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DEAD CAPUCHIN

The dead monk was clad, as when alive, in the brown woollen frock of the Capuchins, with the hood drawn over his head, but so as to leave the features and a portion of the beard uncovered.  His rosary and cross hung at his side; his hands were folded over his breast; his feet (he was of a barefooted order in his lifetime, and continued so in death) protruded from beneath his habit, stiff and stark, with a more waxen look than even his face.  They were tied together at the ankles with a black ribbon.

The countenance, as we have already said, was fully displayed.  It had a purplish hue upon it, unlike the paleness of an ordinary corpse, but as little resembling the flush of natural life.  The eyelids were but partially drawn down, and showed the eyeballs beneath; as if the deceased friar were stealing a glimpse at the bystanders, to watch whether they were duly impressed with the solemnity of his obsequies.  The shaggy eyebrows gave sternness to the look.  Miriam passed between two of the lighted candles, and stood close beside the bier.

“My God!” murmured she.  “What is this?”

She grasped Donatello’s hand, and, at the same instant, felt him give a convulsive shudder, which she knew to have been caused by a sudden and terrible throb of the heart.  His hand, by an instantaneous change, became like ice within hers, which likewise grew so icy that their insensible fingers might have rattled, one against the other.  No wonder that their blood curdled; no wonder that their hearts leaped and paused!  The dead face of the monk, gazing at them beneath its half-closed eyelids, was the same visage that had glared upon their naked souls, the past midnight, as Donatello flung him over the precipice.