“This I found!  This I traced!  Varillo’s servant admitted it to be his master’s—­Varillo’s mistress recognised it as her lover’s—­a slight thing, Monsignor!—­but an uncomfortable witness!  And if you dare to promulgate your lie against my daughter and her work, I will accuse you in the public courts of complicity in an attempted murder!  And I doubt whether the Pope will judge it politic, or a part of national diplomacy, to support you then!”

For a moment Gherardi was baffled.  His dark brows met in a frown of menace and his lips tightened with his repressed fury.  Then,—­still managing to speak with the utmost composure, he said,

“You will permit me to look at this dagger-sheath—­this proof on which you place so much reliance?”

In the certainty of his triumph, old Sovrani was ready to place it in the priest’s extended hand, when young Vergniaud interposed and prevented him.

“No!  You can admire it from a distance, Monsignor!  You are capable in your present humour of tearing it to atoms and so destroying evidence!  As the ‘servant’ of Prince Sovrani, it is my business to defend him from this possibility!”

Gherardi raised his dark eyes and fixed them, full of bitterest scorn, on the speaker.

“So you are Gys Grandit!” he said in accents which thrilled with an intensity of hatred.  “You are the busy Socialist, the self-advertising atheist, who, like a yelping cur, barks impotently under the wheels of Rome!  You—­Vergniaud’s bastard—­”

“Give that name to your children at Frascati!” cried Cyrillon passionately.  “And own them as yours publicly, as my father owned me before he died!”

With a violent start, Gherardi reeled back as though he had been dealt a sudden blow, and over his face came a terrible change, like the grey pallor of creeping paralysis.  White to the lips, he struggled for breath . . . he essayed to speak,—­then failing, made a gesture with his hands as though pushing away some invisible foe.  Slowly his head drooped on his breast, and he shivered like a man struck suddenly with ague.  Startled and awed, everyone watched him in fascinated silence.  Presently words came slowly and with difficulty between his dry lips.

“You have disgraced me!” he said hoarsely—­“Are you satisfied?” He took a step or two close up to the young man.  “I ask you—­are you satisfied?  Or—­do you mean to go on—­do you want to ruin me?—­” Here, moved by uncontrollable passion he threw up his hands with a gesture of despair.  “God!  That it should come to this!  That I should have to ask you—­you, the enemy of the Church I serve, for mercy!  Let it be enough I say!—­and I—­I also will be silent!”

Cyrillon looked at him straightly.

“Will you cease to persecute Cardinal Bonpre?” he demanded.  “Will you admit Varillo’s murderous treachery?”

Gherardi bent his head.