ll up the void. Then, the harm having
been repaired as far as was possible, he at last calmed down.

It was now time for them to resume their journey, for the sun was sinking
towards the horizon, and night would soon fall. Thus the Count ended by
getting impatient. "Well, and those eggs?" he called.

Then, as the woman did not return, he went to seek her. He entered the
stable, and afterwards the cart-house, but she was neither here nor
there. Next he went towards the rear of the _osteria_ in order to look in
the sheds. But all at once an unexpected spectacle made him stop short.
The little black hen was lying on the ground, dead, killed as by
lightning. She showed no sign of hurt; there was nothing but a little
streamlet of violet blood still trickling from her beak. Prada was at
first merely astonished. He stooped and touched the hen. She was still
warm and soft like a rag. Doubtless some apoplectic stroke had killed
her. But immediately afterwards he became fearfully pale; the truth
appeared to him, and turned him as cold as ice. In a moment he conjured
up everything: Leo XIII attacked by illness, Santobono hurrying to
Cardinal Sanguinetti for tidings, and then starting for Rome to present a
basket of figs to Cardinal Boccanera. And Prada also remembered the
conversation in the carriage: the possibility of the Pope's demise, the
candidates for the tiara, the legendary stories of poison which still
fostered terror in and around the Vatican; and he once more saw the
priest, with his little basket on his knees, lavishing paternal attention
on it, and he saw the little black hen pecking at the fruit and fleeing
with a fig on her beak. And now that little black hen lay there, suddenly
struck down, dead!

His conviction was immediate and absolute. But he did not have time to
decide what course he should take, for a voice behind him exclaimed:
"Why, it's the little hen; what's the matter with her?"

The voice was that of Pierre, who, letting Santobono climb into the
carriage alone, had in his turn come round to the rear of the house in
order to obtain a better view of the ruined aqueduct among the parasol
pines.

Prada, who shuddered as if he himself were the culprit, answered him with
a lie, a lie which he did not premeditate, but to which he was impelled
by a sort of instinct. "But she's dead," he said.... "Just fancy,
there was a fight. At the moment when I got here that other hen, which
you see yonder, sprang upon