The new incident which suddenly arose to change all the aspects of the trial and its results would, as far as the analogy of the Roman mode of proceeding and our own holds good, have been too late in one of our courts to produce the results which it did produce.  The judges were on the point of retiring to consider their decision and sentence when they were met at the little private door, by which they were about to leave the court, by one of the ushers.  And the consequence of the few words he spoke to them was that they gave an order—­turned back, and resumed their places.

It might well have been that the new incident might have been prevented from bringing about the result it was calculated to bring about in the Ravenna Court; but the miscarriage would have been caused in an altogether different way from that which has been spoken as sometimes characterising our own courts.

It was very clear to everybody present that the judges would pronounce Paolina to be guilty of the crime they were investigating; and to everybody present, with one or two exceptions, this was a very agreeable and satisfactory winding-up of the unhappy affair.  Ravenna would be able to wash her hands of the matter.  It was wholly, both in conception and execution, the work of a stranger.  Since so great a misfortune had happened, it could not be more satisfactorily accounted for.

It is probable enough, therefore, that any Tom, Jack, or Harry, who, at that conjuncture, had presented himself at the prefettura for the avowed purpose of bringing a new light to the solution of the mystery which had been already so satisfactorily solved, might have experienced considerable difficulty in obtaining for himself any access to, or hearing from, the judges.

But the person who had now thus presented himself at the prefettura of Ravenna belonged to a body, the very lowest and poorest members of which, in that country, can always find, somehow or other, some means of compassing almost any object which is not disapproved by some superior member of their own corporation.  The new-comer was a friar—­old Father Fabiano, the priest of St. Apollinare, as the reader may have conjectured.

The police agents had been anxious to produce him there, as the reader knows, and he had baffled their wishes.  Now the result which it had been desired that he should contribute to had been brought about, or as good as brought about, without him.  What did he want there now?

There was an old usher about the court, however, whose advancing years were beginning to make him disagreeably conscious that the time was at hand when a sentence to a long term of purgatory—­to say nothing of any severer doom—­might make it exceedingly desirable to him to stand well with all those who are understood to have influence with the government in the world beyond the grave; and,—­ if there had been no such person, the friar would have known somebody—­some old or young woman, probably—­or he would have known some other friar who knew some such, who would have been able to influence some brother, lover, or husband, in the way he wished.  As it was, Father Fabiano had no difficulty at all in conveying the message he wished to communicate to the judges.