“That Claude Cazeau has been murdered?  Certainly I suppose it!  It is more than a week now since we heard that he had mysteriously disappeared, and still there is no news.  What can it be but murder?  But I do not for a moment suppose that our good Saint Felix is concerned in it!”

And he smiled, turning over the vellum volume carelessly.

Moretti knitted his dark brows.

“No—­no!” he said musingly, “That would not be possible!  Cardinal Bonpre is not that kind of man—­he would rather bear the heaviest weight of punishment for himself than allow another to suffer.  That I know of him;—­and though I do not admire his extreme views on this point, and do not think them politic, I give him full credit for this particular and uncommon form of—­eccentricity!”

“Or Christianity!” said Gherardi, still smiling.

Moretti pushed aside his papers, and leaning his head on one hand frowned meditatively at the amethyst light which streamed radiantly through the jewel-like window above him.  “Yes—­or Christianity, if you like!” he said, “For Christianity pur et simple, would be eccentricity.  In its primitive simplicity it is an impossible creed.  Founded by the Divine it needs divine beings to comprehend and follow it,—­beings not of this world nor addicted to the things of this world.  And to exist in the world, made of the world’s clay, and the world’s inherited associations, and yet not be of it, is to be judged crazed!  True, there have been saints and martyrs,—­there are saints and martyrs now, unknown and unheard of, but nevertheless consumed by flames more cruel perhaps than those which physically burn the flesh;—­idealists, thinkers, dreamers, heralds of future progress,—­and how are they estimated?  As madmen all!  To be human, and yet above humanity, is the supreme sin!  For that very affront the multitude cried out, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ And to this day we all prefer Barabbas to Christ.  Hence the power of the Church!”

Gherardi put back the volume he had been glancing at, on its shelf, and looked at his confrere with a certain amount of admiring respect.  He had been long an interested student of the various psychological workings of Moretti’s mind,—­and he knew that Moretti’s scheming brain was ever hard at work designing bold and almost martial plans for securing such conversions to the Church as would seriously trouble the peace of two or three great nations.  Moretti was in close personal touch with every crowned head in Europe; he was acquainted more closely than anyone alive with the timidities, the nervous horrors, the sudden scruples, the sickening qualms of conscience, and the overwhelming fears of death which troubled the minds of certain powerful personages apparently presenting a brave front to the world,—­and he held such personages in awe by the very secrets which they had, in weak moments, entrusted to him.  Gherardi even was not without his own fears,—­he instinctively felt that Moretti knew more about himself than was either safe or convenient.