his pride, he was rent by tragic dolour at thought of the dark
battle which was waged around the tiara, all the evil hatred and
voracious appetite which stirred in the depths of the gloom. Then, as
Pierre and Don Vigilio bowed to him as a sign that they would preserve
silence, he almost choked with invincible emotion, a sob of loving grief
which he strove to keep down rising to his throat, whilst he stammered:
"Ah! my poor child, my poor child, the only scion of our race, the only
love and hope of my heart! Ah! to die, to die like this!"

But Benedetta, again all violence, sprang up: "Die! Who, Dario? I won't
have it! We'll nurse him, we'll go back to him. We will take him in our
arms and save him. Come, uncle, come at once! I won't, I won't, I won't
have him die!"

She was going towards the door, and nothing would have prevented her from
re-entering the bed-room, when, as it happened, Victorine appeared with a
wild look on her face, for, despite her wonted serenity, all her courage
was now exhausted. "The doctor begs madame and his Eminence to come at
once, at once," said she.

Stupefied by all these things, Pierre did not follow the others, but
lingered for a moment in the sunlit dining-room with Don Vigilio. What!
poison? Poison as in the time of the Borgias, elegantly hidden away,
served up with luscious fruit by a crafty traitor, whom one dared not
even denounce! And he recalled the conversation on his way back from
Frascati, and his Parisian scepticism with respect to those legendary
drugs, which to his mind had no place save in the fifth acts of
melodramas. Yet those abominable stories were true, those tales of
poisoned knives and flowers, of prelates and even dilatory popes being
suppressed by a drop or a grain of something administered to them in
their morning chocolate. That passionate tragical Santobono was really a
poisoner, Pierre could no longer doubt it, for a lurid light now
illumined the whole of the previous day: there were the words of ambition
and menace which had been spoken by Cardinal Sanguinetti, the eagerness
to act in presence of the probable death of the reigning pope, the
suggestion of a crime for the sake of the Church's salvation, then that
priest with his little basket of figs encountered on the road, then that
basket carried for hours so carefully, so devoutly, on the priest's
knees, that basket which now haunted Pierre like a nightmare, and whose
colour, and odour, and shape he would e