ver was swollen."

That answer shattered my last illusion. I looked back upon the time
I had spent there, upon the despair that had beset me when the music
ceased, upon the joy that had been mine when again I heard it,
accepting it always as a sign of grace. And it was as he said. Not my
unworthiness, but the rain, had ever silenced it. In memory I ran over
the occasions, and so clearly did I perceive the truth of this, that I
marvelled the coincidence should not earlier have discovered it to me.

Moreover, now that my illusions concerning it were gone, the sound was
clearly no more than he had said. I recognized its nature. It might have
intrigued a sane man for a day or a night. But it could never longer
have deceived any but one whose mind was become fevered with fanatic
ecstasy.

Then I looked again at the image in the niche, and the pendulum of my
faith was suddenly checked in its counter-swing. About that image there
could be no delusions. The whole country-side had witnessed the miracle
of the bleeding, and it had wrought cures, wondrous cures, among the
faithful. They could not all have been deceived. Besides, from the
wounds in the breast there were still the brown signs of the last
manifestation.

But when I had given some utterance to these thoughts Gervasio for only
answer stooped and picked up a wood-man's axe that stood against the
wall. With this he went straight towards the image.

"Fra Gervasio!" I cried, leaping to my feet, a premonition of what he
was about turning me cold with horror. "Stay!" I almost screamed.

But too late. My answer was a crashing blow. The next instant, as I sank
back to my seat and covered my face, the two halves of the image fell at
my feet, flung there by the friar.

"Look!" he bade me in a roar.

Fearfully I looked. I saw. And yet I could not believe.

He came quickly back, and picked up the two halves. "The oracle of
Delphi was not more impudently worked," he said. "Observe this sponge,
these plates of metal that close down upon it and exert the pressure
necessary to send the liquid with which it is laden oozing forth." As he
spoke he tore out the fiendish mechanism. "And see now how ingeniously
it was made to work--by pressure upon this arrow in the flank."

There was a burst of laughter from the door. I looked up, startled, to
find Galeotto standing at my elbow. So engrossed had I been that I had
never heard his soft approach over the turf.

"Body of Bacchus!"