ver recall with a shudder. Aye,
poison, poison, there was truth in it; it existed and still circulated in
the depths of the black world, amidst all the ravenous, rival longings
for conquest and sovereignty.

And all at once the figure of Prada likewise arose in Pierre's mind. A
little while previously, when Benedetta had so violently accused the
Count, he, Pierre, had stepped forward to defend him and cry aloud what
he knew, whence the poison had come, and what hand had offered it. But a
sudden thought had made him shiver: though Prada had not devised the
crime, he had allowed it to be perpetrated. Another memory darted keen
like steel through the young priest's mind--that of the little black hen
lying lifeless beside the shed, amidst the dismal surroundings of the
_osteria_, with a tiny streamlet of violet blood trickling from her beak.
And here again, Tata, the parrot, lay still soft and warm at the foot of
her stand, with her beak stained by oozing blood. Why had Prada told that
lie about a battle between two fowls? All the dim intricacy of passion
and contention bewildered Pierre, he could not thread his way through it;
nor was he better able to follow the frightful combat which must have
been waged in that man's mind during the night of the ball. At the same
time he could not again picture him by his side during their nocturnal
walk towards the Boccanera mansion without shuddering, dimly divining
what a frightful decision had been taken before that mansion's door.
Moreover, whatever the obscurities, whether Prada had expected that the
Cardinal alone would be killed, or had hoped that some chance stroke of
fate might avenge him on others, the terrible fact remained--he had
known, he had been able to stay Destiny on the march, but had allowed it
to go onward and blindly accomplish its work of death.

Turning his head Pierre perceived Don Vigilio still seated on the corner
chair whence he had not stirred, and looking so pale and haggard that
perhaps he also had swallowed some of the poison. "Do you feel unwell?"
the young priest asked.

At first the secretary could not reply, for terror had gripped him at the
throat. Then in a low voice he said: "No, no, I didn't eat any. Ah,
Heaven, when I think that I so much wanted to taste them, and that merely
deference kept me back on seeing that his Eminence did not take any!" Don
Vigilio's whole body shivered at the thought that his humility alone had
saved him; and on his f