tell your Highness; but it is less generally known that they have made these infamous doctrines the cloak of private vices from which even paganism would have recoiled.  The man now before me, among other open offences against society, is known to have seduced a young girl of noble family in Ratisbon and to have murdered her child.  His own wife and children he long since abandoned and disowned; and the youth yonder, whom he describes as a Georgian slave rescued from the Grand Signior’s galleys, is in fact the wife of a Greek juggler of Ravenna, and has forsaken her husband to live in criminal intercourse with an atheist and assassin.”

This indictment, pronounced with an absence of emotion which made each word cut the air like the separate stroke of a lash, was followed by a prolonged silence; then one of the Duchess’s ladies cried out suddenly and burst into tears.  This was the signal for a general outbreak.  The room was filled with a confusion of voices, and among the groups surging about him Odo noticed a number of the Duke’s sbirri making their way quietly through the crowd.  The notary of the Holy Office advanced toward Heiligenstern, who had placed himself against the wall, with one arm flung about his trembling acolyte.  The Duchess, her boy still clasped against her, remained proudly seated; but her eyes met Odo’s in a glance of terrified entreaty, and at the same instant he felt a clutch on his sleeve and heard Cantapresto’s whisper.

“Cavaliere, a boat waits at the landing below the tanners’ lane.  The shortest way to it is through the gardens and your excellency will find the gate beyond the Chinese pavilion unlocked.”

He had vanished before Odo could look round.  The latter still wavered; but as he did so he caught Trescorre’s face through the crowd.  The minister’s eye was fixed on him; and the discovery was enough to make him plunge through the narrow wake left by Cantapresto’s retreat.

Odo made his way unhindered to the ante-room, which was also thronged, ecclesiastics, servants and even beggars from the courtyard jostling each other in their struggle to see what was going forward.  The confusion favoured his escape, and a moment later he was hastening down the tapestry gallery and through the vacant corridors of the palace.  He was familiar with half-a-dozen short-cuts across this network of passages; but in his bewilderment he pressed on down the great stairs and across the echoing guard-room that opened on the terrace.  A drowsy sentinel challenged him; and on Odo’s explaining that he sought to leave, and not to enter, the palace, replied that he had his Highness’s orders to let no one out that night.  For a moment Odo was at a loss; then he remembered his passport.  It seemed to him an interminable time before the sentinel had scrutinised it by the light of a guttering candle, and to his surprise he found himself in a cold sweat of fear.  The rattle of the storm simulated footsteps at his heels and he felt the blind rage of a man within shot of invisible foes.