ad desired the divorce, and then the marriage of the
cousins, it had been less with the view of putting an end to scandal than
with the hope of seeing a new line of Boccaneras spring up. But the
lovers were dead, and the last remains of a long series of dazzling
princes of sword and of gown lay there on that bed, soon to rot in the
grave. It was all over; that old maid and that aged Cardinal could leave
no posterity. They remained face to face like two withered oaks, sole
remnants of a vanished forest, and their fall would soon leave the plain
quite clear. And how terrible the grief of surviving in impotence, what
anguish to have to tell oneself that one is the end of everything, that
with oneself all life, all hope for the morrow will depart! Amidst the
murmur of the prayers, the dying perfume of the roses, the pale gleams of
the two candies, Pierre realised what a downfall was that bereavement,
how heavy was the gravestone which fell for ever on an extinct house, a
vanished world.

He well understood that as one of the familiars of the mansion he must
pay his respects to Donna Serafina and the Cardinal, and he at once
sought admission to the neighbouring room where the Princess was
receiving her friends. He found her robed in black, very slim and very
erect in her arm-chair, whence she rose with slow dignity to respond to
the bow of each person that entered. She listened to the condolences but
answered never a word, overcoming her physical pain by rigidity of
bearing. Pierre, who had learnt to know her, could divine, however, by
the hollowness of her cheeks, the emptiness of her eyes, and the bitter
twinge of her mouth, how frightful was the collapse within her. Not only
was her race ended, but her brother would never be pope, never secure the
elevation which she had so long fancied she was winning for him by dint
of devotion, dint of feminine renunciation, giving brain and heart, care
and money, foregoing even wifehood and motherhood, spoiling her whole
life, in order to realise that dream. And amidst all the ruin of hope, it
was perhaps the nonfulfilment of that ambition which most made her heart
bleed. She rose for the young priest, her guest, as she rose for the
other persons who presented themselves; but she contrived to introduce
shades of meaning into the manner in which she quitted her chair, and
Pierre fully realised that he had remained in her eyes a mere petty
French priest, an insignificant domestic of the