ped
us, how their strong, acrid scent made our hearts beat! I can never smell
then nowadays without feeling faint!"

A man-servant brought in the lamp, and Pierre ascended to his room. But
when half-way up the little staircase he perceived Victorine, who started
slightly, as if she had posted herself there to watch his departure from
the _salon_. And now, as she followed him up, talking and seeking for
information, he suddenly realised what had happened. "Why did you not go
to your mistress instead of running off," he asked, "when she called you,
while you were sewing in the ante-room?"

At first she tried to feign astonishment and reply that she had heard
nothing. But her good-natured, frank face did not know how to lie, and
she ended by confessing, with a gay, courageous air. "Well," she said,
"it surely wasn't for me to interfere between lovers! Besides, my poor
little Benedetta is simply torturing herself to death with those ideas of
hers. Why shouldn't they be happy, since they love one another? Life
isn't so amusing as some may think. And how bitterly one regrets not
having seized hold of happiness when the time for it has gone!"

Once alone in his room, Pierre suddenly staggered, quite overcome. The
great box-plants, the great box-plants with their acrid, perturbing
perfume! She, Benedetta, like himself, had quivered as she smelt them;
and he saw them once more in a vision of the pontifical gardens, the
voluptuous gardens of Rome, deserted, glowing under the August sun. And
now his whole day crystallised, assumed clear and full significance. It
spoke to him of the fruitful awakening, of the eternal protest of Nature
and life, Venus and Hercules, whom one may bury for centuries beneath the
soil, but who, nevertheless, one day arise from it, and though one may
seek to wall them up within the domineering, stubborn, immutable Vatican,
reign yet even there, and rule the whole, wide world with sovereign
power!

PART III.

VII.

On the following day as Pierre, after a long ramble, once more found
himself in front of the Vatican, whither a harassing attraction ever led
him, he again encountered Monsignor Nani. It was a Wednesday evening, and
the Assessor of the Holy Office had just come from his weekly audience
with the Pope, whom he had acquainted with the proceedings of the
Congregation at its meeting that morning. "What a fortunate chance, my
dear sir," said he; "I was thinking of you. Would you