Don Rocco, red as a poppy, with his two fingers in his snuff-box, kept silence, his head bent forward and his brows knit in a certain contrite way peculiar to him, facing the tempest with his bald spot, and looking slyly between one wink and another at the unfortunate cards.  When he heard the words “ecclesiastical court” repeated by his companion, whom he held in considerable fear, it seemed to him that matters were becoming quite amusing, so he forced a little smile and took a pinch of snuff between his fingers.

“Oh, you laugh!” returned the implacable professor.  “I hardly know whether, having played at terziglio and having brought such ill luck on your partner, you can say Mass in peace to-morrow morning.”

“Oh!  I can, I can,” muttered Don Rocco, knitting his brows still more and raising a little his good-natured countryman’s face.  “We all make mistakes, all of us.  Even he, over there, not to mention yourself, sometimes.”

His voice had the tone of a peaceful animal badgered beyond all patience.  The professor was laughing with his eyes.  “You are quite right,” said he.

The game was over, the players got up.

“Yes,” said the professor with quizzical seriousness, “the case of Sigismondo is more complicated.”

Don Rocco closed his beady little eyes in a smile, bending his head with a peculiar mixture of modesty, complacency, and confusion, and mumbled: 

“Even that case can be unravelled.”

“You see,” added the professor, “I am well informed.  It is a case, Countess, which Don Rocco must unravel at the next meeting of the ecclesiastical court.”

“There is no such meeting going on here,” said the countess.  “Let it alone.”

But it was not so easy to wrest a victim from the clutches of the professor.

“Let us then say no more about it,” said he quietly.  “But listen, Don Rocco; I am not of your opinion on that point.  As for me, pereat mundus.”

Don Rocco frowned furiously.

“I haven’t spoken with any one,” said he.

“Don Rocco, you have gossiped, and I know it,” answered the professor.  “Have patience, Countess, and give us your opinion.”

Countess Carlotta did not care to enter upon the question, but the professor continued imperturbably to set forth the case of Sigismondo as it had been promulgated by the Episcopal tribunal.

A certain Sigismondo, fallen suddenly ill, asked for a confessor.  Hardly was he alone with the priest when he hastened to tell him that some other person was on the point of committing a homicide, which he had himself instigated.

Hardly had he said these words when he lost voice and consciousness.  The priest doubted whether Sigismondo had spoken in confession or not; and he could not prevent the crime, could not save this human life in peril, unless he made use of what he had heard in confidence.  Should he do this or should he let a man be killed?”