The Cardinal still looked at him earnestly.

“You will not leave me?  You will not, for a thought of saving me from my difficulties, go from me?  If I sleep I shall find you when I wake?”

“I will never leave you till you bid me go!” answered Manuel.  “And if I am taken far from hence you shall go with me!  Rest, dear friend—­rest, true servant of God!  Rest without thought—­without care—­till I call you!”

XXXIX.

The night darkened steadily down over London,—­a chill dreary night of heavy fog, half-melting into rain.  Cardinal Bonpre, though left to himself, did not rest at once as Manuel had so tenderly bidden him to do, but moved by an impulse stronger than any worldly discretion or consideration, sat down and wrote a letter to the Supreme Pontiff,—­a letter every word of which came straight from his honest heart, and which he addressed to the Head of his Church directly and personally, without seeking the interposition of Lorenzo Moretti.  And thus he wrote, in obedience to the dictate of his own soul—­

“Most Holy Father!—­I have this day received through Monsignor Moretti the text of certain commands laid by Your Holiness upon me to fulfil if I would still serve the Church, as I have in all truth and devotion served it for so many years.  These commands are difficult to realise, and still more difficult to obey,—­I would rather believe that Your Holiness has issued them in brief anger, than that they are the result of a reasonable conviction, or condition of your own heart and intellect.  In no way can I admit that my conduct has been of a nature to give offence to you or to the Holy See, for I have only in all things sought to obey the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, upon whose memory our faith is founded.  Your Holiness desires me, first, to cease every communication with the only relatives left to me on earth,—­my brother-in-law Pietro Sovrani and his daughter, the daughter of my dead sister, my niece Angela.  You demand the severance of these bonds of nature, because my niece has produced a work of art, for which she alone is responsible.  I venture most humbly to submit to Your Holiness that this can scarcely be called true Christian justice to me,—­for, whereas on the one side I cannot be made answerable for the thoughts or the work of a separately responsible individual, on the other hand I should surely not be prohibited from exercising my influence, if necessary, on the future career of those related to me by blood as well as endeared to me by duty and affection.  My niece has suffered more cruelly than most women; and it is entirely owing to her refusal to speak, that the memory of Florian Varillo, her late affianced husband, is not openly branded as that of a criminal, instead of being as now, merely under the shadow of suspicion.  For we know that he was her assassin,—­all Rome feels the truth,—­and yet being dead, his name is left open to the benefit of a doubt because