But immediately he was assailed by scruples.
His intelligence and his Christian sentiment were in a state of
contradiction. He was aware that he was not liked by the lady who had
married the Professor's son, a naval officer, now in the East; he saw
that his return to Villa Mayda would be displeasing to her, and a source
of discord between her father-in-law and herself. But how could he say
so now, without implying a want of justice and of charity in a person
whom, from the very fact that she was his enemy, he was especially bound
to love? He entreated the Professor to let him go to Sant' Onofrio.
The change was so sudden that it surprised Mayda. He thought a moment,
understood, and then said, knitting his brows:

"Do you wish me never to forgive some one for something?"

Benedetto offered no further opposition. Only when that night the moment
came to go down to the carriage, and he realised that he could not stand
alone, he said to the Professor, smiling, and placing his hand on his
friend's arm:

"You know that, if I continue thus, you will have a dead man in your
house to-morrow or the day after?"

The Professor replied that he would not lie to him, that this was
possible, but not certain.

"You know," Benedetto continued, no longer smiling, "that first you will
have--"

"I understand what you mean," the Professor interrupted him. "Come in
peace, dear friend. I am not a believer, as you are, but I wish I were;
and I will throw my doors open respectfully to all whom you may wish me
to see. Meanwhile shall we not take this with us?"

From the wall he took the Crucifix which Benedetto had brought with him,
and then lifted the sick man in his powerful arms.

The journey was accomplished without accident. Stretched across the
landau, upon a bank of cushions, Benedetto, who seemed to have shrunk in
stature, answered the Professor's frequent questions more often with
a smile than with his feeble voice. The Professor kept his finger
continually on Benedetto's pulse, and from time to time gave him a
cordial. At the entrance to the villa, either from emotion or from
fatigue, the sick man's poor, fleshless face blanched, and was covered
with sweat, and he closed his great, shining eyes. Mayda carried him
to his own bed, and thus it happened that when Benedetto regained
consciousness he was quite bewildered.

In his state of extreme weakness he did not regain consciousness without
passing through shadows of vain imagin