“I will!” he answered slowly, “because I must!  Otherwise—­” He clenched his fist and his eyes flashed fire-then he went on—­“But beware of Lorenzo Moretti!  He will depose the Cardinal from office, and separate him from that boy who has affronted the Pope.  He is even now soliciting the Holy Father to intervene and stop the marriage of the Comtesse Sylvie Hermenstein with Aubrey Leigh,—­and--they are married!  No more—­no more!—­I cannot speak—­let me go—­let me go—­you have won your way!—­I give you my promise!”

“What is your promise worth?” said Vergniaud with disdain.

“Nothing!” replied Gherardi bitterly.  “Only in this one special instance it is worth all my life!—­all my position!  You—­even you, the accursed Gys Grandit!—­you have me in your power!”

He raised his head as he said this,—­his face expressed mingled agony and fury; but meeting Cyrillon’s eyes he shrank again as if he were suddenly whipped by a lash, and with one quick stride, reached the door, and disappeared.

There was a moment’s silence after his departure.  Then Aubrey Leigh spoke.

“My dear Grandit!  You are a marvellous man!  How came you to know Gherardi’s secrets?”

“Through a section of the Christian-Democratic party here”—­replied Cyrillon—­“You must not forget that I, like you, have my disciples!  They keep me informed of all that goes on in Rome, and they have watched Domenico Gherardi for years.  We all know much—­but we have little chance to speak!  If England knew of Rome what France knows, what Spain knows,—­what Italy knows, she would pray to be given a second Cromwell!  For the time is coming when she will need him!”

XXXVII.

A few days later the fashionable world of Europe was startled by the announcement of two things.  One was the marriage of Sylvie, Countess Hermenstein, to the “would-be reformer of the clergy,” Aubrey Leigh, coupled with her renunciation of the Church of her fathers.  There was no time for that Church to pronounce excommunication, inasmuch as she renounced it herself, of her own free will and choice, and made no secret of having done so.  Some of her Hungarian friends were, or appeared to be, scandalized at this action on her part, but the majority of them treated it with considerable leniency, and in some cases with approval, on the ground that a wife’s religion ought to be the same as that of her husband.  If love is love at all, it surely means complete union; and one cannot imagine a perfect marriage where there is any possibility of wrangling over different forms of creed.  The other piece of news, which created even more sensation than the first, was the purchase of Angela Sovrani’s great picture, “The Coming of Christ,” by the Americans.  As soon as this was known, the crowd of visitors to the artist’s studio assumed formidable proportions, and from early morning till late afternoon, the people kept coming and going in hundreds, which