“There is no need to either warn or command me!” said Manuel, a smile irradiating his fair face as he met the angry eyes of Gherardi with the full calmness of his own—­“I have been sent for, and I am here.  Had I not been sent for I should not have come.  Now that I have been called to answer for myself I will answer,—­with truth and without fear.  For what can any man cause me to suffer if I am to myself true?”

Another heavy pause ensued.  An invisible something was in the air,—­ a sense of that vast supernatural which is deeply centered at the core of the natural universe,—­a grave mystery which seemed to envelop all visible things with a sudden shadow of premonitory fear.  The silence prevailing was painful—­almost terrible.  A great ormolu clock in the room, one of the Holy Father’s “Jubilee” gifts, ticked the minutes slowly away with a jewel-studded pendulum, which in its regular movements to and fro sounded insolently obtrusive in such a stillness.  Gherardi abstractedly raised his eyes to a great ivory crucifix which was displayed upon the wall against a background of rich purple velvet,—­Manuel was standing immediately in front of it, and the tortured head of the carven Christ drooped over him as though in a sorrow-stricken benediction.  A dull anger began to irritate Gherardi’s usually well-tempered nerves, and he was searching in his mind for some scathing sentence wherewith to overwhelm and reprove the confident ease of the boy, when the door leading to the Pope’s apartments was slowly pushed open to admit the entrance of Monsignor Moretti.  Cardinal Bonpre had not seen him since the day of the Vergniaud scandal in Paris,—­and a faint colour came into his pale cheeks as he noted the air of overbearing condescension and authority with which Moretti, here on his own ground, as one of the favorites of the Pope, greeted him.

“The Holy Father is ready to receive you,” he said, “But I regret to inform your Eminence that His Holiness can see no way to excuse or condone the grave offence of the Abbe Vergniaud,—­moreover, the fact of the sin-begotten son being known to the world as Gys Grandit, makes it more than ever necessary that the ban of excommunication should be passed upon him.  Especially, as those uninstructed in the Faith, are under the delusion that the penalty of excommunication has become more or less obsolete, and we have now an opportunity for making publicly known the truth that it still exists, and may be used by the Church in extreme situations, when judged politic and fitting.”

“Then in this case the Church must excommunicate the dead!” said the Cardinal quietly.

Moretti’s face turned livid.

“Dead?” he exclaimed, “I do not believe it!”

Silently Bonpre handed him the telegram received that morning.  Moretti read it, his eyes sparkling with rage.

“How do I know this is not a trick?” he said, “The accursed atheist of a son may have telegraphed a lie!”