-could alone supply certain positive information
which was needed. But how great was the command which the hot-blooded
priest exercised over himself amidst the riotous impulses of his soul!

On either side of the road the Campagna still and ever spread its expanse
of verdure, and Prada, who had become grave and dreamy, gazed before him
without seeing anything. At last, however, he gave expression to his
thoughts. "You know, Abbe, what will be said if the Pope should die this
time. That sudden illness, those colics, those refusals to make any
information public, mean nothing good--Yes, yes, poison, just as for the
others!"

Pierre gave a start of stupefaction. The Pope poisoned! "What! Poison?
Again?" he exclaimed as he gazed at his companions with dilated eyes.
Poison at the end of the nineteenth century, as in the days of the
Borgias, as on the stage in a romanticist melodrama! To him the idea
appeared both monstrous and ridiculous.

Santobono, whose features had become motionless and impenetrable, made no
reply. But Prada nodded, and the conversation was henceforth confined to
him and the young priest. "Why, yes, poison," he replied. "The fear of it
has remained very great in Rome. Whenever a death seems inexplicable,
either by reason of its suddenness or the tragic circumstances which
attend it, the unanimous thought is poison. And remark this: in no city,
I believe, are sudden deaths so frequent. The causes I don't exactly
know, but some doctors put everything down to the fevers. Among the
people, however, the one thought is poison, poison with all its legends,
poison which kills like lightning and leaves no trace, the famous recipe
bequeathed from age to age, through the emperors and the popes, down to
these present times of middle-class democracy."

As he spoke he ended by smiling, for he was inclined to be somewhat
sceptical on the point, despite the covert terror with which he was
inspired by racial and educational causes. However, he quoted instances.
The Roman matrons had rid themselves of their husbands and lovers by
employing the venom of red toads. Locusta, in a more practical spirit,
sought poison in plants, one of which, probably aconite, she was wont to
boil. Then, long afterwards, came the age of the Borgias, and
subsequently, at Naples, La Toffana sold a famous water, doubtless some
preparation of arsenic, in phials decorated with a representation of St.
Nicholas of Bari. There were also extraordina