Gherardi looked at him again sharply, but he was playing with his long rosary and smiling foolishly, and there seemed no use in wasting further speech upon him.  So, muffling himself in his cloak, he strode away, and Ambrosio entered the cell.

“You shall have meat and wine presently,” he said, approaching the bed where Florian lay.  “The devil has given orders that you shall be well fed!”

Varillo looked up and smiled kindly.  He could assume any expression at command, and it suited his purpose just now to be all gentleness.

“My poor friend!” he said compassionately.  “Your wits are far astray!  Devil?  Nay—­he who has just left us is more of a saint!”

Ambrosio’s brown eyes flashed, but he maintained a grave and immovable aspect.

“The devil has often mocked us in saint’s disguise,” he said slowly.  “I tell the porter here every night to keep the gates well locked against him,—­but this time it was no use; he has entered in.  And now we shall have great work to get him out!”

Varillo resting his head on one arm, studied him curiously.

“You must have lived a strange life in the world!” he said.  “That is if you were ever in the world at all.  Were you?”

“Oh yes, I was in the world,” replied Ambrosio calmly.  “I was in the midst of men and women who passed their whole lives in acts of cruelty and treachery to one another.  I never met a man who was honest; I never saw a woman who was true!  I wondered where God was that He permitted such vile beings to live and take His name in vain.  He seemed lost and gone,—­I could not find Him!”

“Ah!” ejaculated Florian languidly.  “And did yon discover Him here?  In this monastery?”

“No—­He is not here, for we are all dead men,” said Ambrosio.  “And God is the God of the living, not the God of the dead!  Shall I tell you where I found him?” And he advanced a step or two, raising one hand warningly as though he were entrusted with some message of doom—­“I found Him in sin!  I tried to live a life of truth in a world of lies, but the lies were too strong for me,—­they pulled me down!  I fell—­into a black pit of crime—­reckless, determined, conscious wickedness,—­and so found God—­in my punishment!”

He clasped his hands together with an expression of strange ecstasy.

“Down into the darkness!” he said.  “Down through long vistas of shadow and blackness you go, glad and exultant, delighting in evil, and thinking ‘God sees me not!’ And then suddenly at the end, a sword of fire cuts the darkness asunder,—­and the majesty of the Divine Law breaks your soul on the wheel!”

He looked steadfastly at Varillo.

“So you will find,—­so you must find, if you ever go down into the darkness.”

“Ay, if I ever go,” said Florian gently.  “But I shall not.”

“No?—­then perhaps you are there already?” said Ambrosio smiling, and playing with his rosary.  “For those who say they will never sin have generally sinned!”