the tragedy enacted.  Nature is a dumb witness to many dramas,—­and it may be that she has eyes and ears and her own way of keeping records.  Sometimes she gives up long-buried secrets, sometimes she holds them fast;—­biding her time until the Judgment Day, when not only the crime shall be disclosed but the Cause of the crime’s committal.  And it may chance in certain cases, such as those of men who have deliberately ruined the lives of trusting and loving women, that the Cause may be proved a more criminal thing than the crime!

That night Martine Doucet slept badly, and had horrible dreams of being dragged by force to Rome, and there taken before the Pope who at once deprived her of her son Fabien, and ordered her to be shot in one of the public squares for neglecting to attend Mass regularly.  And Jean Patoux and his wife, reposing on their virtuous marital couch, conversed a long time about the unexpected and unwelcome visit of Claude Cazeau, and the mission he had declared himself entrusted with from the Vatican,—­“And you may depend upon it,” said Madame sententiously, “that he will get his way by fair means or foul!  I am thankful that neither of our children were subjects for a Church-miracle!—­the trouble of the remedy seems more troublesome than the sickness!”

“No, no,” said her husband, “Thou dost not judge these things rightly, my little one!  God worked the remedy, as He works all good things,—­and there would be no trouble about it if it were not for the men’s strange way of taking it.  Did ever our Lord do a good or a kind deed without being calumniated for it?  Did not all those men-fools in Jerusalem go about ’secretly seeking how they might betray him’?  That is a lesson for us all,—­and never forget, petite, that for showing them the straight way to Heaven He was crucified!”

The next day a telegram was despatched from the Archbishop of Rouen to Monsignor Moretti at the Vatican:—­

“Claude Cazeau visited Hotel Poitiers last night, but has since mysteriously disappeared.  Every search and enquiry being made.  Strongly suspect foul play.”

XXVI.

November was now drawing to a close, and St. Cecilia’s Day dawned in a misty sunrise, half cloud, half light, like smoke and flame intermingled.  Aubrey Leigh, on waking that morning, had almost decided to leave Rome before the end of the month.  He had learned all that was necessary for him to know;—­he had not come to study the antiquities, or the dark memories of dead empires, for he would have needed to live at least ten years in the city to gain even a surface knowledge of all the Romes, built one upon another, in the Rome of to-day.  His main object had been to discover whether the Holy See existed as a grand and pure institution for the uplifting and the saving of the souls of men; or whether it had degenerated into an unscrupulous scheme for drawing the money out of their pockets.  He had searched