There was a dead pause.  At last Moretti spoke.

“I have no place here!” he said, biting his lips hard to keep them from trembling with rage, “This house which I thought was the abode of a true daughter of the Church, Donna Sovrani, is apparently for the moment a refuge for heretics.  And I find these heretics kept in countenance by Cardinal Felix Bonpre, whose reputation for justice and holiness should surely move him to denounce them were he not held in check by some malignant spirit of evil, which seems to possess this atmosphere—­”

“Monsignor Moretti,” interposed the Cardinal with dignity, “it is no part of justice or holiness to denounce anything or anybody till the full rights of the case have been heard.  I was as unaware as yourself that this young man, Cyrillon Vergniaud, was the daring writer who has sent his assumed name of ‘Gys Grandit’ like a flame through Europe.  I have read his books, and cannot justly denounce them, because they are expressed in the language of one who is ardently and passionately seeking for Truth.  Equally, I cannot denounce the Abbe, because he has confessed his sin, declared himself as he is, to the public, saved his son from being a parricide, and has to some extent we trust, made his peace with God.  If you can find any point on which, as a servant of Christ, I can denounce these two human beings who share with me the strange and awful privileges of life and death, and the promise of an immortal hereafter, I give you leave to do so.  The works of Gys Grandit do not blaspheme Christ,—­they call, they clamour, they appeal for Christ through all and in all—­”

“And with all this clamour and appeal their writer is willing to become a murderer!” said Moretti satirically.

Young Vergniaud sprang forward.

“Monsignor, in the name of the Master you profess to serve I would advise you to set a watch upon your tongue!” he said, “Granted that I was willing to murder the man who had made my mother’s life a misery, I was also willing to answer to God for it!  I saw my mother die—­” here he gave a quick glance towards the Abbe who instinctively shrank at his words, “I shall pain you, my father, by what I say, but the pain is perhaps good for us both!  I repeat—­I saw my mother die.  She passed away uncomforted after a long life of patient loneliness and sorrow—­for she was faithful to the last, ever faithful!  I have seen her weep in the silence of the night!—­I have heard her ever since I was able to understand the sound of weeping!  Oh, those tears!—­Do you not think God has seen them!  She worked and toiled, and starved herself to educate me,—­she had no friends, for she had ‘fallen’, they said, and sometimes she could get no employment, and often we starved together; and when I thought of the man who had done this thing, even as a young boy I said to myself, ‘I will kill him!’ She did not mean, poor mother, to curse her lover to me—­but unconsciously she did,—­her sorrow was so great—­her loneliness so bitter!”